Patting myself on the back

Just thought I'd smugly share my small victory of the past week, as I sit here listening to it. I dug out a Technics SL 1311 from the loft which never really worked properly. It's a great old direct-drive deck from before the SL1200 days (hence I thought it might be of interest here), albeit this one has its lid painted in a dubious mustardy shade. I exercised my seriously limited soldering skills to give it new RCA plugs and spent a few hours yesterday dismantling it in order to get the speed switches working again and the auto-return mechanism, cleaned it up so it no longer has any wasps inside(!) and it's working sweetly. If anyone has similar troubles with 1311/1301 or 1310/1300 these instructions work fine:

Auto-return issues http://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=78474
Sticky 33/45 buttons http://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=86571&p=718405&hilit=Sl+1301#p718405

The stylus is knackered so I'll only test it with records I'm not bothered about, but here it is spinning smoothly. Hooray!

Thanks Bob .

As it happens my 10 year old son doesn't see colours like the rest of us, which is the only plausible explanation for him choosing almost exactly the same weird yellow when his room was repainted recently... So it would fit there and I know he'd love a record deck to play his Beach Boys and Mozart records (he does at least have some musical taste). On the other hand I need to flog this to buy some GSP gear! I'll probably advertise it without the lid altogether.

I'm encouraged now to try another project: drive belts in an Aiwa Excelia tape deck. That could be my undoing, though!

Hi Guys

I'm a newbie working my way slowly through the posts

I'd also like to give myself a pat on the back for resurrecting my old turntable.  It's a Thorens TD166 mkVI, which I dimly remember buying back in the early '90's for £300 or £400.  It sadly fell by the wayside when CDs became more popular, and when I was working abroad. 

Then last year, I found myself working from home on a regular basis.  So during a lunchbreak I looked at the disconnected, unused deck and wondered...  does it still work ?

Well it did !  However, a friend had recently purchased a 2nd hand Rega RP3, which sounded pretty good in his system, so for a while I considered selling the Thorens and getting a RP6.  I went as far as demo'ing the RP6, but tbh it didn't sound any better than my Thorens (and I could see some quality control issues ..  wobbly platter!)

At the same time my wanderings through the interweb had led me to the Vinyl Engine Forum - specifically the Thorens section - where I could see many magnificently restored turntables.  I came to understand the lineage of the Thorens suspended turntables (e.g. how they were copied by L*nn ), and that such engineering today is worth many thousands of pounds.

So I was inspired to renovate and update my deck.  It actually didn't need a whole lot of things just mainly some minor tweeks and maintenance...  which from memory were:
 - relubrication of the main bearing
 - damping internal resonances
 - replacing the bottom hardboard base with a SRM-Tech acrylic base
 - cleaning and re-balancing the suspension
 - polishing the platter (just for visual improvement!)
and most significantly, replacing the stock arm with an AudioMods arm.

(For photo's and a full history of these tweeks see my blog within the VE site - same username as here)

I now have a fine looking turntable that sounds great... and the immense satisfaction of having done that myself.

Thanks Jon - I only did the relatively easy upgrade steps... any diy skills I have are very average !