the_nines
Lunatic Member
A little over a year ago, I came across a Garrard 401 on the auction site. The unit looked like it was well taken care of. Negotiated a fair price, I bought it.
I built a plinth for it, which I created a thread for. In the thread, I mentioned that I would show the turntable itself in some future thread.
The link for the plinth can be found here:
http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=634197
This is my Garrard 401.
Seeing that it came from the UK, I was a little scared in what condition I would receive it in, however the seller assured me not to worry. Needless to say, always in the back of my mind was the number of horror stories I read, about the destruction of TTs during transport, and how little was actually known by sellers about proper ways of packing items like this, or how people didn’t really care to find out about the proper way of doing it. I realize nothing is guaranteed, but at the very least if some common sense was used, turntables in general may stand a good chance of surviving the shipping.
Finally, it arrived, very well packed (chassis and platter packed separately, motor braced for transport, spindle guarded against hits or knocks). This seller actually knew his stuff and cared. Thanks bud!
Besides doing a top notch job with bracing the motor, he also secured the idler wheel and changed the voltage to 110-125. Even though he had told me he would do this on emails we exchanged, he never-the-less left a pink post-it to remind me that this had already been done. Nice touch!:
Very clean under-belly:
Original instruction manual and template:
Platter and mat in excellent condition. I used a damp cloth to wipe the rubber mat, nothing more was needed. Cleaned up quite nicely:
Now for the face-plate. Although there were no physical marks in terms of dents, dings or scratches, I wanted to straighten out the warpage:
Simply using a flat screwdriver, I gently wedged the tip of the screwdriver between faceplate and plastic backing, and pushed inward a little at a time, lifting the faceplate off bit by bit. The original tape adhesive had dried completely after so many years, so removal of the entire faceplate was less of a headache than I anticipated:
Removed the old adhesive (it had completely dried-up, became powder when scraped):
Cleaned the backing and faceplate with some lighter fluid and clean cotton rag:
Applied strips of double-sided adhesive tape every few inches throughout the entire back-side of plate. This would help in an even and level sitting:
I built a plinth for it, which I created a thread for. In the thread, I mentioned that I would show the turntable itself in some future thread.
The link for the plinth can be found here:
http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=634197
This is my Garrard 401.
Seeing that it came from the UK, I was a little scared in what condition I would receive it in, however the seller assured me not to worry. Needless to say, always in the back of my mind was the number of horror stories I read, about the destruction of TTs during transport, and how little was actually known by sellers about proper ways of packing items like this, or how people didn’t really care to find out about the proper way of doing it. I realize nothing is guaranteed, but at the very least if some common sense was used, turntables in general may stand a good chance of surviving the shipping.
Finally, it arrived, very well packed (chassis and platter packed separately, motor braced for transport, spindle guarded against hits or knocks). This seller actually knew his stuff and cared. Thanks bud!
Besides doing a top notch job with bracing the motor, he also secured the idler wheel and changed the voltage to 110-125. Even though he had told me he would do this on emails we exchanged, he never-the-less left a pink post-it to remind me that this had already been done. Nice touch!:
Very clean under-belly:
Original instruction manual and template:
Platter and mat in excellent condition. I used a damp cloth to wipe the rubber mat, nothing more was needed. Cleaned up quite nicely:
Now for the face-plate. Although there were no physical marks in terms of dents, dings or scratches, I wanted to straighten out the warpage:
Simply using a flat screwdriver, I gently wedged the tip of the screwdriver between faceplate and plastic backing, and pushed inward a little at a time, lifting the faceplate off bit by bit. The original tape adhesive had dried completely after so many years, so removal of the entire faceplate was less of a headache than I anticipated:
Removed the old adhesive (it had completely dried-up, became powder when scraped):
Cleaned the backing and faceplate with some lighter fluid and clean cotton rag:
Applied strips of double-sided adhesive tape every few inches throughout the entire back-side of plate. This would help in an even and level sitting:
