|
RexBlog
Apr 1, 2024 21:23:57 GMT
via mobile
Post by lurch on Apr 1, 2024 21:23:57 GMT
|
|
|
Post by rexton on Apr 12, 2024 19:37:47 GMT
Thanks for the piccies, and many apologies for the late reply. What's the underside of the plinth made from?
|
|
|
RexBlog
Apr 13, 2024 3:32:31 GMT
via mobile
Post by lurch on Apr 13, 2024 3:32:31 GMT
Layers of 20mm or 25mm mdf with solid walnut cladding.
|
|
|
Post by rexton on Apr 22, 2024 18:27:47 GMT
The Garrard 301 Restoration Project PT XXXXIV - More Tom Tweakery! It's been a little while since I posted anything about the 301. I'm actually listening to some Monk on my 401/SME V-12/Shure M55E/EAR 834 clone setup for a change. The 301 is having some more work done on it so may as well give the 401 a spin. The latest mods have been based around trying to reduce vibration further into the 301 by using some feet I purchased from ebay years ago. These feet are nicely milled aluminium adjustable jobbies which sit on some ball bearings. Here's a quick pickie of the 301 having cleaning and fettling, this is a ritual that I always perform if I'm modding the 301, it keeps all the intrinsic clean. It's not a thing of beauty but it gets the job done. And now just a quick picture of how the new feet look after installation, I've still not properly levelled everything at this stage so the feet may look a little wonky. .
The jury is still out. Sometimes I think they are beneficial and other times I'm not so sure. I still have the bamboo feet I made kicking around so nothing lost and nothing gained if they don't work out. I must admit to being very pleasently surprised by the performance of the 401. It makes a nice change to sometimes listen to different decks and carts. As always stay tuned.
|
|
|
Post by antonio on Apr 23, 2024 6:16:03 GMT
|
|
|
Post by brucew268 on Apr 23, 2024 12:34:43 GMT
It's not a thing of beauty but it gets the job done. And now just a quick picture of how the new feet look after installation, I've still not properly levelled everything at this stage so the feet may look a little wonky. .
The jury is still out. Sometimes I think they are beneficial and other times I'm not so sure. I still have the bamboo feet I made kicking around so nothing lost and nothing gained if they don't work out. I must admit to being very pleasently surprised by the performance of the 401. It makes a nice change to sometimes listen to different decks and carts. As always stay tuned. Does the bearing sit in a long curvature "bowl", or in a curve only slightly larger than the bearing itself, or the bearing is held securely from moving? Only the first option is likely to have good horizontal isolating effect.
|
|
|
Post by antonio on Apr 23, 2024 13:25:04 GMT
If you copy and paste my link into a new tab it seems to work.
|
|
|
Post by rexton on Apr 24, 2024 19:02:38 GMT
It's not a thing of beauty but it gets the job done. And now just a quick picture of how the new feet look after installation, I've still not properly levelled everything at this stage so the feet may look a little wonky. .
The jury is still out. Sometimes I think they are beneficial and other times I'm not so sure. I still have the bamboo feet I made kicking around so nothing lost and nothing gained if they don't work out. I must admit to being very pleasently surprised by the performance of the 401. It makes a nice change to sometimes listen to different decks and carts. As always stay tuned. Does the bearing sit in a long curvature "bowl", or in a curve only slightly larger than the bearing itself, or the bearing is held securely from moving? Only the first option is likely to have good horizontal isolating effect. It sits in a curve slightly larger than the bearing. So probably not the best but maybe not the worst!
|
|
|
Post by rexton on Apr 28, 2024 18:31:23 GMT
Sunday Night - Update Night - Shure Adventures Pt IX - Digging this 70's MM
Welcome back to an occasional series of updates regarding my ever ongoing fun and messing around with old Shure Cartridges. So, I have decided the Shure M44 is just too bright in my system and shall now remain in my collection of vintage curios. I just could not get on with the M44-7 no matter how hard I tried. So, the M55E will be my vintage Shure cartridge of reference and yes I do realise that technically better cartridges exist in the Shure line up. I'm still to try the vast majority of the other cartridges but I'm Shure i'll get around to it at some point. I've so far done the V15 mk III and the SC35C. To my ears the M55E is such a great little cartridge that can be tweaked and pushed to high levels of performance. It does help that I have it mounted to a very well matched tonearm and a very well sorted deck. I have decided to invest in a Panzerholz wooden body for my M55E, it's just one of those things which I think should knock the level of performance up a notch or two.
I have also been playing around with the capacitance loading with the cartridge, I use this element of cartridge optimisation as a type of "TONE" control. Presently I have been loading the cartridge with approximately 550pf, this came as a surprise as I assumed that I'd been listening to approx 500pf of loading. Yep, 50pf, massive! To my ears the presentation is a little softer, no quite as strident, slightly less detail, a more relaxed presentation I shall have to see if I like this and then make a decision about capacitance loading. I have always tracked the M55E at 1.5g which I have found to sound the best in my system. The ultimate would be to add a really nice JICO stylus maybe one of the SAS series, JICO don't make any SAS stylii for the M55E but do for the M44-7. Stylii for the M44-7 should according to the Shure website should be compatible with the M55E, so I'd like to be extremely shure (sorry) that the thing works in the M55E before I buy one.
Phonostage selection has been pretty easy so far. My EAR834 Clone has trounced three MM stages that I own. I own two Croft MM phonostages and a phonostage which resides in my Radford pre-amp. I really have no desire to start trying loads of different MM phonostages but I'm always happy to try something new should the situation occur.
As ever guys. Stay tuned...
|
|
|
Post by rexton on May 5, 2024 20:49:59 GMT
Sunday Night - Update Night - Lenco's and Garrard's.
Lenco!
This is an eBay purchase for a new Lenco deck that I had planned! It's a slow burning project which will act as a test bed for all the various Lenco bits and pieces that are on sale or have been produced in the past. The idea is to produce is MY ultimate expression of a Lenco GL75. A reference deck if you like. It will be pretty cool to pit this against my Garrard 301 and 401. This project is not designed to produce the ultimate Lenco, just my interpretation. So, opinions will vary, but it's just a whole load of fun. Should last another 200K views. Garrard
The 401 has been a mainstay of my collection for a good number of years now. Presently I'm having a kick-ass time experimenting with JICO stylii, this time it's the JICO SAS/B N447X stylus and it's a real stunner. I'm using this with my modded Shure M55E cartridge, this in itself will be going through a modification with a new Panzerholz body when it arrives from Germany. The new stylus has had about 5-7 hours usage and is nicely burning in, I'm having loads of fun trying different LP's which I haven't played for years. The 401 really is an amazing deck even though it's shunned by people who want an example of it's older brother the 301. Here's a quick picture of current 401 setup. And here is a close up of the JICO N447-X SAS/B stylus in the Shure M55E.
I'm still debating getting the SAS/R which would be the ultimate for the little Shure M55E, maybe one day! Stay tuned...
|
|
|
Post by rexton on May 6, 2024 17:54:32 GMT
Monday Night (WHAT'S THIS) - Update night
I seem to be doing quite a few different things all at once so I have merged a few of my projects together and this is how I shall be presenting them.
LENCO GL75
The Reference Lenco Pt CX- Under staters orders....
And we are off. I see a clear path with respects to what I want to do with this Lenco deck, and the answer is NOTHING! Well, I'm going very sympathetically restore the deck. This deck is only several weeks older than myself and I just couldn't possibly butcher the thing. It's a bit tatty in places but it's in very good order. I've noticed a few parts missing but I think I have these in storage and the rest should be very easily fixed. Presently the deck sits in quite a flimsy compressed wood plinth with a very flimsy 3mm hardboard base, it's teak veneered (very 70's) with a few scuffs. The base is a matt black colour with some scuffs and some glue marks. The top plate has a few very small areas of pitting. The tonearm is pitted and the back end is broken. I've not even got the thing spinning yet! I've done some very basic restoration work today. I cleaned the rubber platter mat and the rubber plinth feet with Autoglym rubber restorer and they have come up looking very nice. The tonearm counter weight and slider weight have a very high gloss chrome finish, this was pitted, so today I have polished them both and results are acceptable for the moment, needless to say they will get more attention. And that dear friends is about as far I have got today. It's a slow burn process which I'll do in my spare time. I'm now in a quandry in I want to keep the deck as stock as possible. I'm not going to change any of the wiring other than the mains lead which needs to be properly earthed. I'll service the bearing and maybe the tonearm as well. We shall see!
SHURE
Shure Adventures Pt X - Nit Picking!
The Shure M55E / JICO N447X SAS/B combo is amazing. I've not touched my £1600 Silver Meister II SPU sitting on my Garrard 301 in two weeks! I suppose this preserves the stylus for a few more weeks at some point in the future. I've now decided that 525pF capacitance on the M55E is about as good as it gets on my system. I'm also prefering the presentation of ECC83 over RCA 5691's in a valve phonostage which is something that I thought I would never ever say but there you go. The presentation has lots more detail and is a less laid back and more clinical in nature. Timbral detail is amazing. Soundstage is wide but I do worry that other vintage MM carts have better channel seperation compared to the M55E. my problem is Stylii. Buying old carts is easy but buying a NOS stylii is a complete shitfest. JICO (my preferred suppliers) only make the SAS stylii for a very limited numbers of brands, mainly Shure. ADC and Pickering have produced some excellent carts which would probably knock the M55E into the distance but there is no Stylii which compares to the JICO SAS profile. Loading weight has been another area of experimentation. Guess what I setttled on 1.25g and JICO recommend.............. 1.25g I'm still waiting for my Panzerholz cartridge body from Germany, this should be fun and maybe a nice improvement in presentation.
GARRARD
I've just purchased the Lomg Dog Audio Mk 2 PSU so we should have some fun trying this out on my 301/401 and Lenco.
Well that's it..... Stay tuned.
|
|
|
Post by alit on May 7, 2024 10:21:32 GMT
The PSU is a great bit of kit, wouldn't be without mine.
|
|
|
Post by rexton on May 14, 2024 20:11:57 GMT
OK it's not Sunday, but it is update night!
LENCO REFERENCE TT ADVENTURES
OK, the experiment has begun! I will own two Lenco GL75's, one stock and one an experimental reference TT, I'll be keeping both. So, the old Lenco was purchased originally for parts but it was saved when I noticed that it was made only several weeks before I was born. So I decided to restore the deck and keep it as part of my collection. I've been wanting a new TT project for ages and haven't really seen anything that floated my boat. I never really finished my Lenco journey and I wanted to do so much more with the GL75 TT's. I have been quitely collected pieces of kit for the stock machine, I'll update you all in a later post. The first thing to do was repair the plinth. As we can see it's had a bit of a bash.
The back end had been smashed in. The whole point of this experiment is to try and reproduce as close as possible how a stock GL75 would jave sounded in 1973 (when I was born). A smashed plinth is not going to achive this. So, after a little wood glue and a few clamps we have this.
The underside of the plinth is still a very very clean and tidy black, I'll not be respraying this, there is no need, the paintwork is excellent. I have bought some Teak oil. I did manage to oil the plinth and this is now how it looks.
The rubber grommets which help protect the GL75 form vibration are knackered. Here we can see them removed from the deck and are very badly mishapen. The good news is that I have ordered a replacement set from Sweden! These Swedish grommets are about as close as your going to get to the originals. I have also cleaned the plinths rubber feet with cleaning products, they appear to be in good condition so I've kept these. There are other exciting developments which I'll detail as things arrive through the post. I will be replacing new parts on the deck and will over the next few weeks and months completely go through the deck. It's going to be a slo' blo' resto! The real fun will begin when I build the new reference TT and start comparing all the lovely new add-ons and upgrades that are now available to a lovely old stock machine.
Shure & Garrard
Only a very small update tonight. My Panzerholz cartridge body arrived from Germany and here it is awaiting installation.
Now this should be something special.
Well that's about it for tonight, so as ever stay tuned...
|
|
|
Post by antonio on May 15, 2024 4:51:52 GMT
Lovely job on that plinth.
|
|