Ed Smith

 I originally purchased it used in the mid 80's
when I was working as a repair technician at a High End stereo shop. When I
relocated to Arkansas in '91 I was forced to put my albums and turntable in
storage at my brothers house in N.Y. This July I was finally able to get
them home safe and more or less sound.

My occupation is audio engineering and I design speaker systems and A/V
electronics for Private aircraft so my main listening system is a
combination of home brew and purchased components. Alas I didn't have a
phono preamp but had anticipated the Thorens return so I had already
designed a discrete preamp that would run on batteries.

The Thorens was in pretty good condition and with minor effort I had it
going in no time. What it really needed was a good cleaning, lubrication and
setup. It still sounded pretty good after 14 years of being idle. After
looking at your site and seeing what others had done to rebuild their tables
my interest was piqued and I decided to rebuild the tired, faded base and
thoroughly disassemble and rebuild the table. I was particularly impressed
with "Robert Mudge's" 125mkII and used that as an example. I choose to use
Bloodwood over Paduak because I love the look. Bloodwood is gorgeous but
adds at least 8 pounds to the table and is very tough on tools. It's
actually pretty cheap when compared to the really exotic stuff.

The Tone Arm is a Signet XK50 with a Denon DL160 high output moving Coil. We
sold both at the time and I was able to get them very cheap direct from the
vendors.
That's the first Dire Straits album which I hadn't heard in 15 years. Even
my 16 year old daughter who thinks "old stuff sucks" "I want my MTV"
"Where's my IPOD" couldn't believe how good it sounded. She had never really
seen an LP or heard one before. My reply: "Baby, It's analog ready!"

Anyways I thought I would share my adventure and thank you for all the great
info you provided to help me along!

Peace,
Ed Smith
Conway, Ar.