Garrard 301 Pictures of the Day - SME/BK tonearm.

Posted by B.K. (A) on August 19, 2013 at 19:25:57

I started on this project back in 2009 and put it on hold when I moved from Ireland to the US in 2011. The turntable and plinth have been sitting in a wooden crate for almost 2 years. Finally, got around to setting up this turntable in my home-cinema room last weekend.

Turntable is a Garrard 301 Grease bearing - purchased 4 years ago - condition is amazing!

The plinth is a two tier design, made by http://www.layers-of-beauty.co.uk/. I provided the design; it uses three columns which secure the top section to the bottom section via M10 bolts. The two tiers lengthen the paths from the feet to the chassis and allow a very heavy plinth with access to the tonearm connections from the middle.

Turntable and plinth weighs about 80 LBs. The short tonearm is an SME IV; the 12'' tonearm was custom made for me by SME in 2011. I asked them to make a tonearm based on the M2-12R except with a straight tube. The headshell is a modified RS Labs RS3. I wanted a pivot directly below the stylus tip so that I could experiment with different offset angles but maintain a straight path from the stylus tip to the pivot along the tonearm tube. The pivot is locked (as a side note, the RS-Labs headshell does not self-align even when the pivot is free to rotate).

The geometry of the SME/BK tonearm is currently set to: 305 mm effective length; 6 mm overhang; null radii at 37 mm and 97 mm. This gives moderately low tracking distortion across the playing surface of an LP, but without a significant need to cancel the inside force. Cartridges are Shure Ultra, and Denon DL103R.

Speakers are Kef 104.2 with Klipsch sub-woofers; Yamaha amp.

Pictures were taken with my Samsung Galaxy phone (sorry, have a Nikon DSLR, but it has become too much trouble to use!)

Best regards,

BK

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Topic - Garrard 301 Pictures of the Day - SME/BK tonearm. - B.K. 19:25:57 08/19/13 (11)

Bloody good show Brian! - tubesforever 20:04:02 08/21/13 (4)

Thanks - B.K. 08:30:26 08/22/13 (3)

Provide me with an engineering drawing and I will machine up whatever you want to try. - tubesforever 10:23:30 08/22/13 (0)

RE: Thanks - John Elison 08:40:37 08/22/13 (1)

Good observation - B.K. 11:35:13 08/22/13 (0)

RE: Garrard 301 Pictures of the Day - SME/BK tonearm. - Dman 07:28:56 08/20/13 (0)

Very Nice Set Up! - amandarae 20:01:23 08/19/13 (0)

RE: Garrard 301 Pictures of the Day - SME/BK tonearm. - SgreenP@MSN.com 19:50:56 08/19/13 (3)

Which wood box? - B.K. 04:16:47 08/20/13 (1)

RE: Which wood box? - SgreenP@MSN.com 07:50:46 08/20/13 (0)

RE: Garrard 301 Pictures of the Day - SME/BK tonearm. - amioutaline? 20:39:43 08/19/13 (0)

Garrard 301 Pictures of the Day - SME/BK tonearm.

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