I've been facinated with record decks since an early age when I "modified" an old BSR deck by removing it from a "radiogram" & putting it in its own plinth.

    I purchased this record deck around 6 years ago for 50 GBP from a friend in England. It was manufactured in 1984 by a British company called Logic & was at the time meant to be a rival to the legendary Linn Sondek LP12. Cost was comparable to the Sondek, unlike the Linn though this design used a fully sprung chassis with a main centre spring & 3 auxiliary sprung suspension points. I'm fortunate enough to know the complete history of this particular deck, as I mentioned it was originally purchased new by my friend Simon in 1984, I have the original sales receipt & original packaging. The deck was 385 GBP, the Mission arm around 200 GBP & the Goldring Electro 2 cartridge 125 GBP. 

    I remember listening to various albums played through my friends HiFi system which if memory serves me was a pair of Boothroyd Stuart Meridian M2 active speakers (or was it Mission Argonauts Simon?). Either way it was the Meridians I liked best, but I digress, I purchased the Tone arm (a Mission 774) from another friend at work on Simon's behalf. The combination of Logic deck & Mission tone arm was a very popular one & gives a good sound. Not as "bouncy" as the Linn, maybe a little dryer, but overall more accurate.

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    As purchased by me back in 1998 the deck only ran at 45 rpm due to a faulty electronic speed controller. I put the deck away & in the meantime emigrated to Canada (see the Family page for that story). So one day a couple of years ago I took it apart & eventually traced the fault to a shorted resistor, caused I think by overheating. Having fixed it I discovered that the deck was running too fast, it uses a Phillips  Impex synchronous motor & with a 60 Hz mains frequency runs faster than it did at the 50 Hz frequency back in the UK. Logic are no longer in business & I couldn't find a source of technical data, the manual says the deck can be converted "by your local dealer" which implies a simple modification, probably to the electronic speed controller. My solution however was simply to calculate what the drive pulley diameter needed to be in order to achieve the correct speed. having done this it was machined down by 1mm & gave satisfactory results.

    A few months ago I got the bug to renovate the deck, it was starting to look a little shabby after 20 years. From the start I wanted the deck to look a little more modern but still retain its 80's charm so I stripped it down and started thinking...

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    First was the colour, I used a textured silver paint for the main plinth & silver enamel for the deck plate. I decided to move the motor to a remote mounting, similar to a Mitchell Gyrodec in order to remove vibration through the plinth. I also decided to move the electronic speed controller off the plinth & put it in its own housing. The primary purpose for this was to help keep it cool, the secondary purpose was because it looked cool!

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    I also decided to upgrade the tone arm & tone arm wiring to Cardas 33 gauge OFC wire & also the way the tone arm wiring is attached to the interconnect output from the deck. This was originally a fixed arrangement which I never really liked so I've added gold plated RCA (phono) sockets which are connected with Teflon dialectric 33 gauge solid core OFC  wire to the tone arm. The Tone arm itself was originally painted black & looking shabby so I stripped off the black paint & polished the arm tube to a brilliant finish.

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    Just recently I got the bug to tinker with other HiFi related stuff as a consequence I designed & made a custom support rack. I'm also going to upgrade/ modify my wife's Quad amplifiers & am making my own interconnects & speaker cables.

    You can read about it.

Here..

    UPDATE! 3/30/07.

    So with the Home theatre project 99% complete I've moved my attention back to the HiFi system & have been busy trying to get everything together & set up. I re- modified the home made rack which you can read about here.  so with that out of the way I installed it on the concrete support pillars, re filled the deck support pots with sand, installed & leveled the Pucks & placed the Deck on the Pucks.

    At this point I had to come up with a method for mounting the drive motor, so after a couple of ideas came up with the method shown in the pics below. (The wiring is temporary...(honestly...).

    As you can see, I used a steel base & a couple of steel columns, along with flat washers for minor height adjustment. When all assembled together it make a very rigid motor mount, I stood this assembly on a 3mm thick high density foam mat made of similar material to a computer mouse mat. This adds further isolation for any vibration from the motor. When powered up this combination produces zero noise, the deck is completely silent when running which is a very good thing...

    Of course (!) once I got it going I immediately noticed that the deck was running slower then 33.3 rpm, & after tweaking the speed trimmer pot it was still running slow. In addition to this, the stop button on the motor speed controller is refusing to work.. Doh! So I decided to re-do my calculations & machine the motor pulley down again, this time allowing for the full motor speed @ 60Hz which is 300rpm. This means around 1mm to be removed on my trusty mini lathe, in addition to this I'm also considering removing the speed controller completely. This will require a re-design of the pulley & my thinking right now is to have a 2 stage pulley with the smaller one for 33.3 rpm & a slip on type for 45rpm. I'll post the details once I have come up with the design concept, but I think fundamentally removing the speed controller is the correct thing to do, it is convenient for speed changes but ultimately is one more thing to go wrong...

Footnote: I am also considering swapping the motor to a DC type with Pulse Width Modulation for the speed control. I have found suitable components on the Web for reasonable money..

    I just received my phono TC-750-LC pre-amplifer, I ordered it from Phonopreamps.com , you can see it under the deck in picture #4. Having installed it & re setting up the deck & tone arm I threw a Marillion LP on & sat back to listen. It really does sound very good, there is tons of detail which really puts the average CD player to shame. I have more things planned to improve the sound further, including making up new speaker cables using Monster reference Z2 cable. I found this on the Net for 99 cents a foot, a real bargain..

    Finally, (for now) I am also considering selling my Tannoy R2 speakers or trading them for Klipsch RF15 or RF25 floor standers. The low output from the deck & modest power output from the tube amp conspire to reduce the overall achievable sound pressure level. The Klipsch speakers are way more sensitive than the Tannoy's so will go louder..

To be continued..