Another 1200 being modded

So, I have had my 1200 mk2 for a few years now, it has had little use due to 2 children getting in the way.
But the time has come to tinker, so here we go.

I knew my deck had had a quiet life as i purchased it from an old guy on ebay who had the full technics set up
but had recently lost most of his hearing. He had managed to sell everything else but the other bidder didn’t want the deck!!

After cleaning everything with alcohol to get rid of the furniture polish it was covered with I realised this had had very little use.

I took the deck to my local hi-fi dealer who put a new cartridge on and set it up for me (still not figured out setting up a cartridge).
We plugged it into his system at the time (£10k speakers, Naim everything else) and it sounded sweet, was very happy!

A few years on and two children later I have managed to listen to it about 50 times and have loved every revolution, but I had some spare cash and a little time
so decided to have a play!



So far I have:

Removed and cleaned the bearing, just waiting for some oil to be delivered. the bearing appears to be in great condition, very little wear, it any, to the plate in the base.

Shorted out the pitch control, never used it.

Removed the transformer and am making an external PSU as per the thread on here, just waiting for a case to arrive!
I am going to leave the stock regulator for a while, it should be up to the task for a few more months. And I can’t find a thread on here showing in enough detail for me what to do! Maybe someone could PM me???
Purchased an Achromat, had a sorbothane thing on there before but never liked the sound, it was very dead in the mid.
Re-used the power switch to switch the strobe light.
And after a few emails to j7 have had my arm re-wired and foam packed.


I know people say you should go one step at a time and listen to your deck after each tweak, but to be honest I haven’t the time at the moment. So I am taking this tweaked deck
as a starting point and going from there.
What will happen next I’m not sure, maybe a new cartridge, maybe a new phono stage, probably more vinyl.

I hope there will be photos to come once I have figured out how to upload them, though I tend to forget to take any whilst I’m working!

It has been great reading the other threads on this site, and good to know that this is a loved deck.

A