mending things

A feature of many of these blogs is my interest in vinyl records and turntables. Over the years I've acquired and restored a number of decks, all of which came with a cartridge, but were they worth keeping ? Well my  friend , and fellow fan, Clive,  has created a wonderful resource with a great deal of invaluable detail about a wider range of cartridges, and reviewed in classic decks like the PL12D, Rega Planar 2 and the Technics SL1200. Well worth visiting for the insight and detail around things such as optimal capacitive loading , for example PHONO CARTRIDGE REVIEWS

A good friend recently spotted this turntable, being sold on ebay, buy it now at a reasonable price , and very close to where I live. We had both commented  in the past that the Harmon Kardon T40 was a nice looking deck, with it's deep platter and champagne colour, so it was impossible to resist. Not that well known in the UK, and advertised as not working, with a hinge missing and a burn on the lid. I bid, won and collected it from the seller, who was very helpful , and it was exactly as described. Upon inspection the main problem with the deck not starting was due to the belt having petrified  and broken into small pieces. the motor worked as I lifted the arm across the platter and appeared to correctly eject the arm at the end of side position. The motor turned fine. As well as the drive belt, the 4 rubber feet had also aged badly. As you can see from the picture ,all that remained was the 4 springs and parts of the rubber cup. I think there would...

I like to  fix up old turntables, especially odd or unloved examples. I've posted blogs on other decks , and back in November I saw a Thorens TD280 on ebay at a very low cost,  close to where I live. I prefer to collect, as decks need careful packing. In the end I bid and won the deck, a Thorens TD280 MK IV. I am very familiar with the Thorens brand, my father had a classic TD150 MkII followed by a TD 160 - both classics from the Golden era of the 70's. I read that the deck was a late model, and while not a classic Thorens, was widely liked by people who had owned one.  the TD280 is from the mid 80's when CD had started to put a lot of turntable manufacturers out of business, and like the Ariston Q-deck, was a bit of a final gasp from a declining industry. I got the auction for £64 as the external power supply had been lost, but I was sure I could source a new one. A bit of research indicated the external power supply is 16v AC,  and I happened to know this...

Introduction I got back into vinyl records via my son, who started to collect LPs and i decided he should get a turntable as a surprise Christmas present back in 2011. I was an avid audiophile in the late 70s and my father had a great system,including a Thorens deck. With the arrival of CD, I whole heartedly  embraced that format and hadn't owned a deck since around 1981. I decided that a decent but cheap second-hand deck would be ideal for my son, it wasnt a main present, more a novelty to see if he liked the format, so i didnt want to get a more expensive Thorens or Rega, brands i remembered from my past. Why my son had started buying vinyl without a deck I'm not sure, I think he liked the aesthetic and tactile element of LPs, which i completely understand. Looking on ebay, many of the decks i remembered were going for high prices second hand, and in the end i bid for and won a humble NAD 5120 . I looked for decks close to where i lived as i reasoned that with...