Garrard 301 restoration project

[Barry]

What's the alternative? You can always buy one from ebay and then run the gauntlet of it not working and then you could always look for a scrap 3009 or 3012 and then pay silly money for that and possibly not working as well. £104 is very steep but it's hopefully piece of mind. That's the problem with running vintage kit.

Agreed, you are a bit over a barrel there
Anyway good luck with the rewiring - will you be doing it yourself, or have someone like Johnnie at Audio Origami do it for you?
Have a good holiday.

[Wakefield Turntables]

J7 is doing all the rewriting

[Wakefield Turntables]

The 301 is being upgraded again! Stay tuned folks.....

[Wakefield Turntables]

PART XXXIII - I TOLD YOU SO...

Good evening ladies! Well the usual culprits are sitting around the listening room, a bottle of single malt, some music, and some hifi gear, the thing that's missing is JAZZ! I'm not playing JAZZ because my main transcription device is sitting in pieces on my listening room floor. The 301 is undergoing BIG surgery! I'm making a new plinth. So here is my old plinth.







And here are some pictures showing the plinth development.



Heres a picture of the top part of the new plinth, take a look at the homebrew Dr. Feickhert's equipment (5 minutes in my shed and cost pennies)!






A bit of DIY in the workshop.






An afternoon later and we have something which looks like a nearly finished plinth.






So the idea is for mass, this thing will weigh >25kg. I'll be adding a decoupled motor and a CLD layer. I'll be fitting two SME classic tonearms, mainly a 3009 and a 3012 both sporting SPU's. One arm will do MONO / vintage MM duties (the 3009), whilst the 3012 will be specifically classical and Jazz. I'll have the pick of two phonostages and then this should see me through winter until I get the upgrade itch again. PANZERHOLZ or Permali......


Stay tuned....

[Jimbo]

That should do the trick Andy. 25KG is plenty of mass. Looks like my first turntable but I used mine without a plinth! Just suspended it on a wall bracket. Not sure if that was a great thing to do but it sounded OK.

[Wakefield Turntables]

The old plinth looks like a toy compared to the new one.

[A.Grail]

Bamboo is an interesting material... The thing about gunning for mass as a goal is - mass stores energy, sure it shifts the frequency but the dissipation is slow. This can translate to a smearing of dynamics. Managing resonance is dependent on three factors: Stiffness, damping and mass. Striking the right balance is the key for the 'resonance recipe' in terms of getting something tasty sound wise. Bamboo has a reasonable stiffness, good intrinsic damping and has a decent amount of mass (Better than birch ply.) Interested to see how you get on here, we went through a lot of iterations.

[Wakefield Turntables]

Bamboo is an interesting material... The thing about gunning for mass as a goal is - mass stores energy, sure it shifts the frequency but the dissipation is slow. This can translate to a smearing of dynamics. Managing resonance is dependent on three factors: Stiffness, damping and mass. Striking the right balance is the key for the 'resonance recipe' in terms of getting something tasty sound wise. Bamboo has a reasonable stiffness, good intrinsic damping and has a decent amount of mass (Better than birch ply.) Interested to see how you get on here, we went through a lot of iterations.

Thanks Matt. I'm taking things easy with the plinth, just doing a little every night. Hopefully it will be finished enough for me to do some basic evaluations soon.

[Wakefield Turntables]

The Garrard Restoration Project Pt XXXIV - It's here.....


After many years of planning and then just sitting on my backside I decided to build a new plinth for the 301. The old plinth was a crappy bitch ply from Eastern Europe, purchased when funds were low and I knew next to nothing about these decks. Move forward a decade and we have more knowledge. more pennies and a workshop that can make such things as plinths. Spurred on by (well I'm not quite sure what), I decided to get some Bamboo and make my own designed plinth, never made one before and I decided to completely ignore any well thought out designs because I think I know better (). I did have some ideas that I wanted to implement and these were to have a more massey plinth, something with better damping qualities than ply, something which was cheaper than Panzerholz, and I wanted a two tonearm setup, mainly my SME 3009 and 3012, decoupled motor and a CLD layer.

And here we go




Not the last word in woodworking skills, Robert Thompson has nothing to worry about . So, I few design details. The tonearm mounts arm made from Panzerholz and have been directly coupled to the Bamboo plinth. I have removed the SME rubber grommets in the tonearm mounts. I'm hoping to get maximal damping this way rather than isolation ( I have a plan for this). The SME 3009 is a MONO/vintage MM (when the mood takes) tonerarm, this will be using a Croft MM phonostage using the RCA 5691 valve and Belden cabling as I quite like the tone this produced. Currently the 3009 has not been tested, my time has been utilised setting up the 3012 today. The 3012 has a very special modified Silver Meister II SPU. This SPU was beginning to show signs of wearing out so I decided to get a FGS stylus profile added and I created my dream SPU. This dream consisted of silver coil windings and the FGS stylus profile, coupled to SPU design and we have a very sexy performer . Mass has increased from around 12-14kg from the old setup to around 28Kg for the new one. Damping has been improved with Bamboo and Panzerholz. I will be including a CLD layer in the form of a Townshend seismic platform. I'm waiting for the correct pods to arrive and be installed, presently, the 301 weighs too much (fat git) for the current pods! I have decided to re-use the old pods under the Croft Epoch pre-amp that I run. I hope to do something similar to how old Royal Navy Valve gear used to be mouted, SPRINGS, provides great isolation for valves from vibration. If it's good enough for the Royal Navy it's good enough for my Croft Epoch.



Here the's Townshend jobbie waiting for new pods...



The Townshend Seismic platform provides the CLD layer that I wanted. The only thing missing is the decoupled motor. I'll be leaving that for the time being as I want to fully learn the new systems sound and then we can start to evaluate where we can improve things. I will at some point write up what I can hear through the big Tannoys...

As ever people. Stay tuned...

[Barry]

Looking good Andrew,

But why do the two tonearm mounts have a different thickness?

Cheers
Barry