Garrard 301 restoration project

[Wakefield Turntables]

Hi Charlie,

It's bamboo, best and cheapest alternative to Panzerholz (which would be my first choice).

[Wakefield Turntables]

The Garrard Restoration Project Pt CII - Return of the three Amigo's.

Just a short one tonight. The Garrard plinth has been slowly simmering away in the garage. I work on the plinth mostly of weekends when I've not done a 10-11 hour day at work. I do not want to make silly errors. The top plate of the plinth is 95% finished I just have a little material to remove from the third tonearm and all should be good. So far both the 3012 and the SME 3009 which houses the Ortofon MONO SPU work perfectly and they are silent with no hum. My experiments with earthing leads have worked well. The alignment of all three tonearms works well now and records play perfectly on the MONO tonearm. Alignment with the second and third tonearms has always been problematic and the mounting distance was out by several mm's meaning that records didn't play properly and sometimes skipped. The problems with the second and third tonearms have been solved. I purchased a Vernier caliper with accuracy upto 0.01mm which is perfectly fine for mounting distances of old SME tomearms. The 3009's have been mounted at 214.5mm and the 3012 at 294.1mm. Weirdly everything seems to work.
The second 3009 just needs to be tested to make sure it plays records properly and the earthing produces a silent background.
The plinth should come together fairly quickly now that the top plate has been finished. It's still probably going to be several weeks before this is full finished.



Stay tuned.......

[Barry]

Shaping up nicely there Andrew.

Given the depth of the spacers for each arm base, you have to choose the vertical entry connector version for all of the SME arms. Given their depth, I think those spacers would look good if painted black, but that's just my opinion.

One thing that would annoy me is the way the grain pattern of the top plate of your plinth, gives the impression that the chassis of the 301 is 'crooked' with respect to the edges of the plinth.

[Wakefield Turntables]

Barry. I just chucked the deck in, it's not properly mounted. It was more just to get a quick shot of how the 301 looks.

[Barry]

Ah! - I did wonder, as the front edge if the deck didn't look parallel to the front edge of the plinth, regardless of the pattern of the veneer. Also none of the fixings had been fitted.

So far, so good.