John's asking the questions that I was going to ask.
A GL75 in serviced form and with replacement V blocks on the arm will work well with the more "rugged" cartridges out there - AT120E, Shure 97Xe (with damper brush used) and obviously, the M3D would be perfectly at home, with or without the N21 stylus. The wires from deck to amp could do with replacing too, but even without an arm change and with standard plinth (especially if it's the springy one) you'll get a good sound that beats a Rega or old Linn Axis.
I'm not keen on heavy butchering of a GL75 top-plate when fitting different arms (apologies) but if you save hard for a 12" arm, you can remove all the L75 paraphernalia and put the arm outside of the top-plate area...
The Thorens TD150 can also make a great donor turntable, although springy belt drives aren't favoured here
SOME elderly direct drives are really fab still and with a modern cartridge and careful siting, an old Techie SL13/14/15/16/17/1800 mk1 or 2 can work a treat, although the Mk2 versions of the 1300/1400/1500 had iffy cuening devices which fail and so far, noone makes a replacement part to my knowledge.
Good luck
P.S. Those phono stages on Dave's site look interesting too, but I have to give a shout for Glenn Croft's phono stage too. The man cares, makes 'em well (and they're easy to service anyway) and is delighted to work on old stuff he's made, updating or modifying the circuits according to what he's learned over the years.
Last edited by DSJR; 31-07-2009 at 17:23.
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