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Thread: For sale or swap: Garrard 401, AT1503MkI, DAS plinth, SPS bearing

  1. #1
    montesquieu Guest

    Default For sale or swap: Garrard 401, AT1503MkI, DAS plinth, SPS bearing

    Tricky one here … I’ve grossly overspent in recent months what with the new panzerholz-core plinth for the TD124, assorted work done on cartridges, my new Audiopax preamp arriving any day soon (thankfully I have the balance of this available and ready to roll), and the final blow, a bill for almost £4k at the dentist yesterday for a dental implant (I trashed a crown last new year’s eve that proved to be un-repairable - it’s take this long for all the restoration work to be completed) that was about £800 more than I was anticipating.

    Anyway something has to give and sadly that will need to be my Garrard 401. It’s possible I may have a cartridge or two for sale in the not too distant as well.

    I bought the 401 motor unit from here on AoS originally (it’s my third one actually), I serviced it myself cleaning it and greasing all the linkages and replacing the important bits such as the brake pad and thrust pad. The plinth is a DAS Acoustic one, about £400-worth landed with a couple of spare arm boards (one cut for SME, the other for Fidelity Research FR64/Ikeda IT345). The original Garrard mat is in beautiful condition.

    The arm fitted is an Audio Technica AT1503 MkI. This was originally developed by Audio Technica for the Japanese broadcasting industry, and the majority of early Technics SP10 decks (also originally designed for broadcast use) were fitted with this arm. A consumer version of the arm, the ATP12T, was also released (though differences are minor). Mine has had the full fettling treatment by Angus (Phonomac) of this parish with high-qualify hybrid ceramic bearings fitted and his usual work damping the tube.

    It’s pretty much the perfect arm for low or low-ish compliance cartridges such as Ortofon SPUs, Denon 103, Koetsus and the like, including lower compliance MMs such as the Shure SC35C, Denon DL107 and the like) though I have run it successfully with more compliant cartridges indeed it's sounding lovely today with a Shure M55E. Angus also fitted a small platform, in turn fitted with an arm retaining clip and a Jelco arm lift, so that the detached arm support doesn’t need to be fitted. This works nice and smoothly. It comes with two counterweights, the original/standard one which perfectly balances out 'normal' cartridges on the standard AT headshell, and a heavy one made by Angus for SPU-weight cartridges. A 1.2m Audio Origami arm cable comes with it.

    The arm comes with a suitable AT headshell and no cartridge, though I have a few I could potentially offer at extra cost to potential buyers if they are short of something suitable (such as an ebony-bodied Tonar Diabolic E - pictured, Shure SC25C, also pictured in the whole TT shot).

    I also managed to acquire something of a rarity, an SPS bearing, you can see from the pic here how this compares to the standard oil bearing, this is a grease bearing based on the principles of the one in the original 301, but better executed than the standard (ancient) version. This has lifted the performance in an altogether surprising and quite dramatic way and together with the Longdog Audio PSU from my TD124 (not for sale) the deck is now a gobsmackingly good performer.

    I counted up what this deck owes me and without cartridge it’s a shade over £1600. I’m offering it for sale outright for for £1350 or part-swap based on that value ... my preference would be for a part-swap for something like a Technics 1210, valued according to condition/modifications but ideally in the region of £300-£400 … it would be nice to have a nice but sensibly-valued deck to use in my study as the Garrard is complete and utter overkill for this purpose - really, especially since the bearing was fitted, it’s far, far into main deck level and indeed a better main deck than I’ve owned for most of my life. It's simply mad to have this on a high shelf in my study and not making daily music in a main system somewhere.

    Open to part-swap offers on some other non-Technics TTs but generally speaking I’m not a fan of either belt drive (uniess high-mass) or of arms that don’t have swappable headshells.

    The optimum partner for the Garrard/AT1503 would be my silver-coiled SPU Gold in its original box that’s due back from Holistic Audio in NL any day soon - I sent this for a checkover by Kilian who pronounced the tip in very nice order but he re-aligned the suspension. It’s not definitively for sale but likely asking will be about £950 (if I can bear to part with it, that is), or possibly an SAEC C3, fabulous low compliance cartridge made for SAEC by Excel, the company behind both Hana and Etsuro (and with its beryllium cantilever, line contact tip and metal body, it fits somewhere between the two ranges closer to Etsuro than Hana) - though that one has only just come back to me after being in the possession of Adam (Westlower) and I probably want to enjoy that a bit longer, I’m running it on the TD124 at the moment and it’s quite simply stunning and an interesting antidote to my slightly more old-fashioned sounding Miyajimas. A later discussion though.






  2. #2
    Join Date: Dec 2017

    Location: Lincolnshire

    Posts: 342
    I'm Martin.

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    Lovely, lovely, lovely and if I'd not invested so much in my G99 this would be on its way to me :-)

  3. #3
    Join Date: Nov 2008

    Location: North Down /Northern Ireland/ UK

    Posts: 19,484
    I'm Neil.

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    If you end up splitting I would be interested in the plinth, if not no worries.
    Regards Neil

  4. #4
    montesquieu Guest

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    Not looking to split at this point. It's a very nice package that all works really well together.

  5. #5
    Join Date: Oct 2014

    Location: Surrey

    Posts: 549
    I'm Graham.

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    Wow, that's gorgeous Tom and stupidly good VFM. I can confirm the bearing is a nice upgrade. Someone is in for a treat here
    Good luck with sale, not that you will need it - I bet this doesn't last the weekend. ��

  6. #6
    Join Date: Dec 2017

    Location: London

    Posts: 23
    I'm Tautvilas.

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    PM sent

  7. #7
    montesquieu Guest

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    Quite a few offers of interesting stuff but no-one with a Techie yet ...

  8. #8
    montesquieu Guest

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    Sold

  9. #9
    Join Date: Mar 2016

    Location: Barnet, london UK

    Posts: 2,146
    I'm Adam.

    Default

    Great TT. Great vfm with the upgraded bearing and arm
    Knew it would fly
    "lack of passion is fatal"


    Vinyl: Thorens TD-124mk2 / SME-312 Aluminium 'special' / SME M2-9R / STEREO: Etsuro Urushi Cobalt / Shure M3D / Ortofon SPU A95 / Cartridge Man Music Master / Shure - SC35C (US) / SAEC C3 MC MONO: Miyajima Zero B 0.7mil mono / Miyajima Premium 1.0 / Amps & SUTs: Radford STA25 mk3 / AD Audio 'Satchmo2' pre & LCR phono / Hashimoto HM-7 SUT / ETR-MONO SUT Digital: Audio Note 4.1 (with DAC5 upgrades) DAC / Roon / Tidal Speakers: Tannoy 12" MGs' in RFC custom 'Rutland' Cabinets with RFC crossovers / Tannoy ST-100 Super Tweeters Cables: LFD Grainless phono / RFC Mercury / Duelund DCA16GA tinned copper / Kimber 12TC / SW1X Audio Design USB-SPdif / Duelund DCA20GA interconnects / SW1X Audio SPDIF Aero 6 / Mains Power Conditioner / Box Furniture rack / Audiodesk Systeme Vinyl Cleaner / a very beautiful & understanding Wife!

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