My Restored 1954 Garrard 301

No I meant the record you went to check out with your friend, where you bought the player instead.

 

It was a classical collection, six hundred LPs and a lot of box sets, lots of string quartets and violins, so the right repertoire, also the right period and condition, but there wasn't a Decca SXL, Columbia SAX or HMV ASD to be seen, I suspect somebody had hit the collection and cherry picked it before the son had taken possession, there were still a few less well known, but decent records in there, the sort part-time dealers might miss. Unfortunately without a few sought after higher value records it just wasn't worth my friend's time and money to buy it as low end classical are very cheap and slow sellers, he'd probably still be selling them in 18 months. Never let people cherry pick collections if you want to shift the whole lot, let a proper shop have it, take the low end as well and even pay you for them, a lot of times they'll pay a lot better for the good stuff as well, good shops like to maintain a good reputation, fly by night dealers don't worry about such things.

 

Dubmart,

The 401 is a terrific pick up. A friend of mine, who can afford any table, has chosen a 401 for his main system. He thinks the motor on that table is superior to that of the 301. But, he has an older 301 grease bearing installed in the table. The arm he uses is a current model Ortofon AS-309S (12") arm. It is somewhat difficult to get in the U.S., but it is available from Japan (I bet in Europe it is easy to get).

I have a local dealer who sells 301's, 401's and Thorens 124's as his premium tables. These have gone into some truly scary-expensive systems. While he likes the looks of those massive wooden plinths with many layers of cutouts, such that the plinth is almost a solid block with carve outs for the operating parts, he doesn't particularly like how that sounds. He prefers the sound of the thinner and lighter plinths because the massive ones sound just a bit "dead" to him. I don't know about this myself, so I am just passing on this information.

 

Come to Papa, McLover loves you, Garrard 401. I love this photo. Pure British elegance. That Garrard 301 is beautiful, and will sing once restored and run in.

 

Having had a chance to spend some time with the 401 I've encountered the first problem, the previous owner thought it would be a good idea to fix the dust bug to the plinth by drilling a hole in it and putting a screw through.

Unfortunately not only is there a hole, but also a nasty scratch where the drill must have slipped, it looks like I won't get away with not getting it stripped and painted, that's a very expensive hole, but I'm determined to do the deck justice and do it just once properly, I'm quite tempted to get it done in a custom colour, something to think about. Underneath it's lovely and clean although the mains wiring needs redoing properly.

 

We're not worthy!

 

Try the .7 mil stylus, might help a bit with the reproduction. Your 301 is a nice deck, Britain's best. Idler drives at their best are for my ear, the best reproduction off of vinyl and shellac. Fun and nothing makes music and is so involving. My idler is more workhorse to some people (my QRK 12-C under an assumed name, the tonearm's a humble Shure M 232, and a Shure M 44-7 in use. It made every record and still makes every record I own sound like new. I hear things from it I have never heard from my records, and it gets out of the way of my music. I get why you love that Garrard 301. A pity they sold so few in the USA. Enjoy the music, and tap your feet along, we're brothers in idlers.

 

WOW! Guess I am kind of slumming it with my TT below.

 

Your needle maybe!

 

So cool! Lots of hard work and time, well worth it! May I ask, what was the total amount, out of pocket expenses to complete it? I have my late dad's Garrard Dual 1018 like to refurbish it. I haven't read the whole thread yet, but you did all the work yourself and were the new parts hard to find to replace the old ones? Thank You, Dubmart!

 

Hi David, although I'm reasonably handy and could have come up with an adequate plinth and stripped and cleaned the deck I wanted both to be of a very high standard so paid professionals to do the work. In the UK we're lucky that there are several companies that specialise in restoring Garrards and also several making replacement parts, the one I chose charges £550 for a complete strip and rebuild including any required replacement parts, repainting the plinth and platter and replacement shipping box made to original specifications, some companies charge twice as much. I got a bit of a deal on the plinth, but if you want a professionally made and finished one you are looking at £300+ and can easily exceed £1,000 without feet, having said that you could make your own very effective DIY ply or MDF plinth for under £200 or get a local shop to cut you some slate for a similar amount. I have around £3,000 into the 301, minus the cart, but including the arm which is about half the money, I did get the deck at a very good price to start with though, if you wanted to buy a similar refurbished early 301, a new plinth and SME arm retail you could easily spend £5,000 -£6,000 which definitely makes me feel better about what mine cost as did the way mono records sound.

I have minimal knowledge of nice Duals, so can't definitively answer your question, but I know there are similar levels of parts support for idlers from Thorens and Lenco, although Thorens parts seem to cost a lot more, so I wouldn't be surprised if Dual parts were also available, as for the plinth I have a friend who did a really nice veneer job on a later Dual so if you have some basic skills and are happy with the existing plinth I'd say have a go. If you don't already know the site Vinylengine: Vinyl Engine - The Home of the Turntable have a useful library of manuals and a helpful forum. I think refurbing your dad's Dual and giving yourself a deck you use regularly is a fantastic thing to do, I may have said it earlier in this thread, but these old decks can be turned into practical heirlooms that also look and sound great.

 

Dual-arm plinths are for those who really love music, who don't let cartridge or arm limitations get in the way of proper playback. After all, music lovers who have 2 arms, can easily handle mono and/or 78 RPM discs, and have the other arm for more modern records.

 

I’m sorry I have a bit of a dry sense of humor. Sometimes it falls flat.

 

You don't need to worry about that. But I was also explaining a common reason why professional turntables like this often have two arms.

 

Absolutely! I sometimes wish I opted for the double plinth on mine. It would be a luxury, since 85% of what I play is stereo anyway. Mono would be the obvious choice, but it would also be interesting to mount a 9inch arm for a wider variety of modern cartridges. I loved my Dynavector 20xl, and it would be cool to jump to that for some stuff.

 

Such a cool thread! Ray at CTC recommended that exact plinth. looks awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

@Dubmart did you try the Trilogy 906 by any chance.

 

Andy, I've not been able to have either a home loan or proper demo on the 906, but with that proviso I wouldn't hesitate to buy one or the 907 at the right price come to that, in a couple of years when I should have the spare cash to catch up on my idler restoration backlog and spend on gear I will have at least four decks up and running, the 906 is what I plan to add, a proper head to head with the similarly priced Vertere will be very interesting, having said that I cannot fault the Vertere and I'm very happy with it, but I would like to try the Trilogy. I think I leaned towards the Vertere because I'm using it with a Xerxes 10 and I was swayed by that.

 

I guess this is a good time to update my current deck situation, I have the 301 doing mono duties and still absolutely love it, the Orbe as my main stereo deck and the Xerxes 10 also geared up for stereo in my second system, having sold my Gyro SE and given my SL-1210 to my niece I'm down to three sorted and fully functional decks, however they are outnumbered by restoration projects, a bit like buses decks all seem to come along at once and I now have a TD-124 MKII, two Garrard 401s and Goldring G-99. I'm hoping to sort the 124 on the cheap with an East European plinth and either a SME 3009 arm that I already have or something under £1000, I will couple it with an Ortofon 2M 78/Mono, obviously the 124 could end up being a money pit, but fingers crossed it won't and I may get it finished in the next few months. I plan on sending at least one of the 401s off to Ray at CTC, then follow a similar path to the 301, nice plinth and 12" SME, I have a few ideas for the second 401, but nothing finalised or costed and then it's the poor neglected G-99's turn, I also have two GL-75s as parts donors and I think I'll work on that one myself. If I can manoeuvre the decks into a small enough space I'll take a picture and post it here, but they do take up a lot of space.

 

That is quite a turntable stable, Dubmart! Very impressive!