Paul Stewart of this parish might be able to shed some wisdom on getting the best out of this, since he worked for Victor/JVC in its heyday. Looks like a great motor unit - don’t rule out chipboard for the plinth, though. Chipboard has rather benign acoustic properties (unlike MDF and birch/beech ply) and that may explain why many of the great Japanese decks of this period came in chipboard plinths. I once spent a fortune having a custom heavy plywood plinth made for my Kenwood KD-770D, and quickly learnt that the original and ‘cheap’ looking chipboard plinth was better in every single aspect of sound and music reproduction!