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Official AR Turntable Owners Thread

I am going to build one more with some parts I still have ..original tonearm with the headshell mod?
Still thinking..:scratch2:

John.:music::D
 
jleon92f said:
I am going to build one more with some parts I still have ..original tonearm with the headshell mod?
Still thinking..:scratch2:

John.:music::D
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Here's a thought... If you would like to swap cartridges, you can fit a Technics arm to the assembly, which will give you a newer headshell. There is one pic in this thread where the arm is a Pioneer and Pioneer headshell. There may be several options that I would look into.

Food for thought. :music:
 
Need to give this a weekend bump. There's been some ARs that members have recently bought, and hopefully they will post them here as well.

Post pics of your AR table, stock or upgraded, it doesn't matter. If you have an AR, make sure you post pics of your table. :music:
 
dosmalo said:
I had planned to be just "fashionably" late to this party and then the Garrard showed up and I got whisked away with her for a time.
I grabbed up 2 XAs a few years ago, one for the project and another as a parts source. Both were 2 motor jobs that I converted to a single Hurst model A motor. Initially I did the VinylNirvana tune up and then when I joined AK I became a marcmorin fan-boy and started following his posts:scratch2:.
What I ended up with was a 'super-charged sleeper' of a VPI ass-kicker!
With Marc's guidance from afar (and supplied thrust plates) I did the platter bearing and shaft resurface and mass loaded the sub chassis using Linn black springs while balancing everything just so-so. Then just recently I shipped the arm to Marc and he did some really magical things to it in addition to supplying the other thrust plate and it moves like SILK! I braided the litz wires (the braiding girl on youtube made it look soooo easy!).
As you see in the pics, I love the original tone arm as I have 5 head shells for it all loaded with various carts. It's running a Soundsmith retiped Dyna 10X Ultimo right now. Other carts are Shure M97xE, Pickering V-15 Micro IV, Pickering XSV 3000 w/ VL stylus and waiting on a Grado 8MZ stylus for a ZT+ body I have.
Since I'm not a dust cover kind of guy, I made a platter cover out of an old Buck Owens LP painted a nice shade of copper with a CD hot glued to it and a lead laboratory sink stopper epoxied to it all. Fits perfectly on the platter and keeps the dust off my felt mat. I like the felt because it adds no weight to the platter and that's what I had on it when I mass-loaded the suspension. I like the brass spikes because I couldn't really hear any difference between them and rubber. They look sharper than the rubber too.
Going from the VinylNirvana tune up to Morin guided mods to Morin modded tone arm magic has really made this XA blast off out of orbit!
I love it better than any table I've ever had.
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Very very nice.
 
Here are some pics of a single motor vinyl clad AR-XA that I just finished building up for a friend. I repainted the top plate satin black, and installed the wonderful arm rest fix from fellow AK'er 12ax7. (Thanks Gary!) In addition, I had Marc Morin perform his magic on the main platter and tonearm, and polished the outer platter and tonearm counterweight as well as the dustcover. It is now looking as well as sounding great! I will be packing it up and shipping it to my friend in Portland next week.







 


Just a different color.
And I have a question for the AR owners using a black w/8mz stylus. This one seems to track well @ 1.9 gr. Does this seem ballpark?
 
Treker said:
Here are some pics of a single motor vinyl clad AR-XA that I just finished building up for a friend. I repainted the top plate satin black, and installed the wonderful arm rest fix from fellow AK'er 12ax7. (Thanks Gary!) In addition, I had Marc Morin perform his magic on the main platter and tonearm, and polished the outer platter and tonearm counterweight as well as the dustcover. It is now looking as well as sounding great! I will be packing it up and shipping it to my friend in Portland next week.







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Wow Trekker!!!

You did a marvelous job on your friend's turntable. Is that a walnut base? Some of the pics, it looks as if the top plate is grey instead of black. I'm sure it's the lighting playing tricks. Your friend is going to be stoked when he opens the box. Will this be his first AR? The sound will blow him away.

You are a true friend, and those are hard to come by these days! :music:
 
Here's my AR-XA, I built from 2 parts tables.

I've now got an AT-11E2 cartridge on this one and it sounds great.

141530B0-BBD8-41B8-A553-EDF615D545BB_zps54k2z5i7.jpg
 
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4Play said:
Wow Trekker!!!

You did a marvelous job on your friend's turntable. Is that a walnut base? Some of the pics, it looks as if the top plate is grey instead of black. I'm sure it's the lighting playing tricks. Your friend is going to be stoked when he opens the box. Will this be his first AR? The sound will blow him away.

You are a true friend, and those are hard to come by these days! :music:
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Thanks for the nice complement. I really appreciate it.

No, it is a vinyl clad unit, but it is certainly hard to tell in the photos.

My friend fell in love with the look of the AR-XA after he visited a while back and saw and listened to mine. He was having trouble finding one in Portland so I started looking for one here too, and found it on my local CL. I told him I would pick it up and recondition it for him if he would pay for it, so that is what we did. I donated my labor, but of course we paid Marc Morin for his work. Right now I am working on packing it up so that it will make the trip to Portland safely. Proper packing is a challenge in and of itself.
 
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SFBayArch said:
Here's my AR-XA, I built from 2 parts tables.

I've now got an AT-11E2 cartridge on this one and it sounds great.

AR-XA-2_zps2735d19f.jpg
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Love it, love it, love it!!

Another gorgeous AR. Please post another pic. The background is whitewashed.
 
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As per my previous post, I'm a great fan of the original tone arm (especially given Marc's engineering with it).
My question: Does anyone have any ideas for a display/storage of the original headshells?
I have a pretty nice box made exclusively to store my other head shells but the XA/XB shells won't fit like other bayonet ones do.
Anyone have ideas?
 
FYI: there's a nice un-restored XA with box on the Austin Craigslist. No association.
 
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dosmalo said:
As per my previous post, I'm a great fan of the original tone arm (especially given Marc's engineering with it).
My question: Does anyone have any ideas for a display/storage of the original headshells?
I have a pretty nice box made exclusively to store my other head shells but the XA/XB shells won't fit like other bayonet ones do.
Anyone have ideas?
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That's easy. A table for each.
 
Just restored this XA, one of the last ones made. Has the XB tonearm and arm rest, had vinyl clad plinth now wood veneer. Top has same finish as XB. Very long serial #.



 
nice work as usual steve. thats the highest serial number i've seen (and i keep track). all pre-XB serial numbers were sequential. only prefixes changed, based on model. first the TT, then the TX, then the XA and TA models were produced concurrently. the lowest serial i've found is TT03239 (owned by a fellow AKer). now, you've got the highest.



.
 
loquatious said:
nice work as usual steve. thats the highest serial number i've seen (and i keep track). all pre-XB serial numbers were sequential. only prefixes changed, based on model. first the TT, then the TX, then the XA and TA models were produced concurrently. the lowest serial i've found is TT03239 (owned by a fellow AKer). now, you've got the highest.



.
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That would be my table also;
 
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