Making a £13000 turntable

[Phorize]

I have a 401 coming which I was given over thirty years ago and inadvertently hidden by friends in dry storage behind a load of other stuff ever since. I'll have some fun restoring it (it *was* in mint condition at the time) but I have no pretentions to grandeur with it. What gets me though is that people who spend this kind of money on an old vinyl antique will actually regard this as a main source and 'better' than that new fangled digital stuff...

That’s true, through a 2 watt triode amp obviously.

 

[stevenswall]

Plywood is an exceptionally good material for this sort of project. The price of the turntable quoted is largely for the arm/cart and motor. The plinth will be well under 10% of the price quoted.

Thanks, that makes SO MUCH more sense! I thought the majority of the price was for the body, and my mind went "Veneer?! How about an entire solid block of nice wood?!"

 

[Phorize]

Thanks, that makes SO MUCH more sense! I thought the majority of the price was for the body, and my mind went "Veneer?! How about an entire solid block of nice wood?!"

I’d want it made out of moon rock if the it was 13k for the plinth

 

[Wes]

Plywood is an exceptionally good material for this sort of project. The price of the turntable quoted is largely for the arm/cart and motor. The plinth will be well under 10% of the price quoted.

is Baltic Birch better than mdf in absorbing resonances?

or what makes it an exceptionally good material ?

and are the data on whatever factors involved presented in that YT video? how about the methods section?

 

[Frank Dernie]

Plywood is an exceptionally good material for this sort of project. The price of the turntable quoted is largely for the arm/cart and motor. The plinth will be well under 10% of the price quoted.

The 401 was an improved and re-styled version and cost £72.00 new.
The plinth is mainly decorative unless part of the isolation system - which this does not seem to be.
I am totally amazed by the way in which the whole record playing equipment fashion has been absorbed into "the more expensive the better" bollox of the "high-end".
In period perfectly good record players were not that bad a price and the completely over the top ones look cheap now!

 

[Bamyasi]

Thanks, that makes SO MUCH more sense! I thought the majority of the price was for the body, and my mind went "Veneer?! How about an entire solid block of nice wood?!"

Regardless of the question of cost/pricing, you probably never worked with wood. Solid wood is extremely poor construction material, especially large blocks of it. This is mostly due to natural wood reaction to different amounts of moisture in the environment causing it to expand and contract to a large degree (and also twist). There are some extremely expensive and rare woods which are very dense and naturally oily, so less affected by moisture but they have their own peculiarities (besides price). That is one of the main reasons things like plywood were invented and introduced into construction. Modern construction uses pretty much zero natural solid wood. Even lumber that looks natural from outtside, is most likely not. It's all glued together from separate pieces/plies/particles. And by the way, birch is an excellent hardwood material, best type of wood for construction this side of genuine mahogany and tropical exotica.

 

[Archsam]

Regardless of the question of cost/pricing, you probably never worked with wood. Solid wood is extremely poor construction material, especially large blocks of it. This is mostly due to natural wood reaction to different amounts of moisture in the environment causing it to expand and contract to a large degree (and also twist). There are some extremely expensive and rare woods which are very dense and naturally oily, so less affected by moisture but they have their own peculiarities (besides price). That is one of the main reasons things like plywood were invented and introduced into construction. Modern construction uses pretty much zero natural solid wood. Even lumber that looks natural from outtside, is most likely not. It's all glued together from separate pieces/plies/particles. And by the way, birch is an excellent hardwood material, best type of wood for construction this side of genuine mahogany and tropical exotica.

Yep - that's why engineered timber flooring (usually 3mm real wood veneer on top of a cross-laminated plywood layers) is better performing than real wood flooring, because they don't wrap and shrink.

 

[Phorize]

is Baltic Birch better than mdf in absorbing resonances?

or what makes it an exceptionally good material ?

and are the data on whatever factors involved presented in that YT video? how about the methods section?

Mdf is clearly a less resonant material. Ply is more durable though and is still not hugely resonant in a massive plinth.
Both are easy to work and are affordable.

Clearly if the imperative is to reduce vibration through the plinth, a solid design much as the one in the video is suboptimal.

Fair shout though, I should have said ‘reasonable’ rather than ‘exceptional’.

I can’t imagine that this plinth was ‘designed’ from an acoustic point of view. The convention in idler drive circles for decades was to mount the motor unit in the most massive plinth available. I personally use a suspended plinth for mine which seems to work well. I don’t have the equipment to measure it though.

 

[DSJR]

The 401 was an improved and re-styled version and cost £72.00 new.
The plinth is mainly decorative unless part of the isolation system - which this does not seem to be.
I am totally amazed by the way in which the whole record playing equipment fashion has been absorbed into "the more expensive the better" bollox of the "high-end".
In period perfectly good record players were not that bad a price and the completely over the top ones look cheap now!

When I started in a then high end dealership in Watford in 1974, the 401 was coming close to the end of its production life and I'm sure was routinely available for £36 at discount (I need to find the old 'KJ' catalogues as some kind of proof here ). The Bastin layered plinth which the one above looks so similar to - each 'tier' individually jigged out so as not to have a 'sound-box' inside, did appear to help quieten this machine down a good bit. Prices on said bases went progressively through the roof though and no way could I afford well over a grand even for a non-veneered version - they do look quite smart in 'naked' form and just sensitively stained and/or lightly varnished and gave an excellent 'sound quality' to these decks in fairness and no bass 'boom' if the structure was thumped while playing. A Notts Analogue Spacemat (a kind of long recovery fairly dense foam) placed on top of the Garrard mat seemed to finish the 'sonics' off very well as regards record support (it remains around twenty to twenty five quid I think and I use one to this day).

I have a test UK report in a Hi-Fi Sound magazine from 1968 which measured the rumbles and grumbles from a handful of high end decks from 1969 including the 401, (Goldring) Lenco G99 and Thorens TD124 and in a well isolated SME plinth, none of them were very good but hence my comments on an earlier post, the 401's noises were very low in frequency and most likely filtered out by broadcasters (and also the much misunderstood and now maligned Quad 33 preamp which was popular at the time, with it's band limiting below 35Hz [perfect for modern small speakers which distort so much at these frequencies]).

Being an early 60's kid, I much prefer the looks of the 401 but the first one I had, as well as the G88 I owned for a few months (a few months was a lifetime when I was a late teenager) tended to 'drone' at around 100hz or so and a colleague who ran a 401/Transcriptors Fluid arm and ADC XLM told me he tried three 401's until he got a quiet one. To Frank - no idea really as you worked with them I gather, but all I can do is quote nearly fifty year old memories.

 

[Frank Dernie]

When I started in a then high end dealership in Watford in 1974, the 401 was coming close to the end of its production life and I'm sure was routinely available for £36 at discount (I need to find the old 'KJ' catalogues as some kind of proof here ). The Bastin layered plinth which the one above looks so similar to - each 'tier' individually jigged out so as not to have a 'sound-box' inside, did appear to help quieten this machine down a good bit. Prices on said bases went progressively through the roof though and no way could I afford well over a grand even for a non-veneered version - they do look quite smart in 'naked' form and just sensitively stained and/or lightly varnished and gave an excellent 'sound quality' to these decks in fairness and no bass 'boom' if the structure was thumped while playing. A Notts Analogue Spacemat (a kind of long recovery fairly dense foam) placed on top of the Garrard mat seemed to finish the 'sonics' off very well as regards record support (it remains around twenty to twenty five quid I think and I use one to this day).

I have a test UK report in a Hi-Fi Sound magazine from 1968 which measured the rumbles and grumbles from a handful of high end decks from 1969 including the 401, (Goldring) Lenco G99 and Thorens TD124 and in a well isolated SME plinth, none of them were very good but hence my comments on an earlier post, the 401's noises were very low in frequency and most likely filtered out by broadcasters (and also the much misunderstood and now maligned Quad 33 preamp which was popular at the time, with it's band limiting below 35Hz [perfect for modern small speakers which distort so much at these frequencies]).

Being an early 60's kid, I much prefer the looks of the 401 but the first one I had, as well as the G88 I owned for a few months (a few months was a lifetime when I was a late teenager) tended to 'drone' at around 100hz or so and a colleague who ran a 401/Transcriptors Fluid arm and ADC XLM told me he tried three 401's until he got a quiet one. To Frank - no idea really as you worked with them I gather, but all I can do is quote nearly fifty year old memories.

You reminded me of a little story here.
Garrard basically sold ex-works at cost + 10%, they allowed a 30% margin for wholesalers iirc and 50% for retailers, so they could offer a good discount. It always seemed odd to me that the company that designed, invested in tooling and manufactured the product had the smallest margin, but there you are.
Anyway when 401 sales slowed (I was there 1974 to 1976) and so production engineering re-planned production since it wasn't sensible to build on a production line any more. The parts were put in a room in racks and the 401 assembled on the bench. This resulted in the production cost going up so it was re-costed and the retail price went up.
Subsequently sales increased again!
A Linn LP12 was about £300 then iirc, they definitely priced on the "what will the market accept/expect" basis widely used in commerce.

 

[DSJR]

Umm - My first LP12 in late 1976 was around £64 from memory and went up to £75 I think - the Grace 707 arm seemed to sell for similar money I remember (I've still got one, but it's a bit sharp sounding for modern flatter-response cartridges). I did a few days at a rather distinctive London based Linn dealer and learned the rudiments of the black art of making these early ones work, receiving proper training there a year later - another story to be told, but these experiences have stood me well in forty five years and counting. Linn prices did drastically increase dramatically though as they became more UK-popular.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Umm - My first LP12 in late 1976 was around £64 from memory and went up to £75 I think - the Grace 707 arm seemed to sell for similar money I remember (I've still got one, but it's a bit sharp sounding for modern flatter-response cartridges). I did a few days at a rather distinctive London based Linn dealer and learned the rudiments of the black art of making these early ones work, receiving proper training there a year later - another story to be told, but these experiences have stood me well in forty five years and counting. Linn prices did drastically increase dramatically though as they became more UK-popular.

I must be remembering what I paid for mine later - I wasn't paid enough at Garrard to buy a fancy TT, I had a Connoisseur BD1 with Audio Technica AT1005 arm, then a Japanese spec Technics SP10 I bought from the scrap man for £12 about a year after we measured, stripped and costed it.
I bought LP12, Ittok and Troika at Ovation once I had a F1 engineer's salary!

 

[DSJR]

The SP10 was/is a wonderful thing nicely plinthed although power supplies can now be testy. On a radio show he did, Kenny Everett had a whale of a time showing the instant 33 to 78 and straight back to 33 platter control this deck has.

The LP12 shot up in price as its notoriety increased. The mid 80's LP12/Ittok as you had/have is a pile of poo sonically - and it took a trip to Linn themselves in '87 and a direct comparison with the master tape to show just how 'poo' it was and remind me how 'different' vinyl is in so many cases. All but finished me with vinyl it did until I was shown the light by a different manufacturer which 'closed the gap' hugely for me. Linn have done a lot to improve the fruitbox though, but costs are ridiculously high in my opinion. Come back the donor TD150 design, all is forgiven - somehow get an AT VM95ML or better, a VM540 in the TP13A shell and grin from ear to ear (less than £500 even at today's silly used money)

 

[FrantzM]

Lol me too. Don't know why, I never watch anything about record players.

But … They know what your tendencies are and their algorithm, wrongly in your case, perhaps, decided that those were things to feed you/us.

That grasp those companies have on what we do and even how we think, is becoming more and more big-brother-like. I would qualify it as a threat.

 

[Hiten]

I have a test UK report in a Hi-Fi Sound magazine from 1968 which measured the rumbles and grumbles from a handful of high end decks from 1969 including the 401, (Goldring) Lenco G99 and Thorens TD124 and in a well isolated SME plinth

I tried very hard to find performance reports of vintage turntables from world radio history (Former American radio history) website. But Information was sparse. I guess the rumble differences were around 10 to 15dB compared to good quality direct drive turntables. Besides there was unweighted and weighted measurements. I mostly listen to CDs but ocassionaly Vinyls too. I like them as music making mechanical devices.
It would be great if you share few pages.

Thanks and regards.

 

[Frank Dernie]

But … They know what your tendencies are and their algorithm, wrongly in your case, perhaps, decided that those were things to feed you/us.

That grasp those companies have on what we do and even how we think, is becoming more and more big-brother-like. I would qualify it as a threat.

Perhaps I am paranoid but a while ago (years not weeks) I specified a limit on data I was prepared to share in Google and subsequently most google pages fail to open so I decided to expunge everything google from my life, which is slightly limiting but not too bad.
If I watch a YouTube video I decline the offer to "log in" as well.
It is inevitable that there will be lots of legal and illegal dishonesty on the internet, given its easy of access now and lack of a policed legal framework so I am pretty cautious, though maybe in my ignorance I am still missing a lot of potential security threats and data mining

 

[restorer-john]

and also the much misunderstood and now maligned Quad 33 preamp which was popular at the time, with it's band limiting below 35Hz [perfect for modern small speakers which distort so much at these frequencies]).

It was an utterly putrid preamplifier IMO, and the later 34 was no better, plagued by leaking capacitors, poor quality CMOS switching and horrible DIN connectors.

 

[JeffS7444]

Although not really my style, that seems like a beautifully made plinth, and given that at least £10000 of the £13000 price was due to the cartridge and tonearm alone, the cost doesn't seem outrageous.

"The Beautiful Foolishness of Things" is a line which appears in the opening sequence of Amazon's "Prime Japan" series, and it seems appropriate with many aspects of the hifi hobby too.

 

[DSJR]

It was an utterly putrid preamplifier IMO, and the later 34 was no better, plagued by leaking capacitors, poor quality CMOS switching and horrible DIN connectors.

I disagree - I think on the 33 but not the initially foggy sounding 34 which got better when they went to RCA's and changed the colour - and today even with gain not ideally suited to CD 2V output, I wouldn't say it's particularly veiled compared to other expensive more lavishly dressed high end confections. The high pass filter works just fine for baby boxes anbd the sub 100Hz distortion Amir regularly measures Mind you, mine's had the Dada update kit which replaces the transistors too although I've left the gain as original and use the tape input set to low sensitivity - compromise suits me when I use it... I love the styling too and its lack of audiophool sensibilities

 

[Andysu]

£13k and mostly common as mud MDF used. I keep my new Technics SL-1210GR that I got a slight lower price cos it was a demo model in the showroom. £13k for MDF when MDF is commonly £8 pounds for 4x8.