All things vinyl

Okay all that’s left is to reassemble the plinth, chassis and faceplate. Oh, and yes, fit the mounting plate and the SME 3009 Series 2 improved tonearm. Lots of very knowledgeable people know much more about setting up a tonearm than I do so I don’t plan to cover this. With all due respect to Stevenson and LofgrenB, I prefer Bayerwald tracking for the SME. It just sounds more pleasing to my ear. The other options are equally valid.

Below is the oil damping device attached to the SME. It is...

Honestly, I wasn’t sure about this, I could have bought a new faceplate for between £100-150 depending on the colour. Silver was cheapest, Black, my preference the most expensive. But that would have been too easy, besides it wasn’t the brief for this refurb. That said the faceplate was as important as the platter if it looked crap then the entire project would crap.

Could I convert the TD160 faceplate into a 160B style? The plan was give it a go and revert to plan b - buy a faceplate - if it didn't...

The plan here was to absorb as much vibration as possible without affecting the outward look of the platter. This required some thinking outside of the box and honestly if it didn’t work as well as other methods, I would rather keep the ‘chrome’ look of the outer edge. That said I’ve used this technique before and it does make a significant difference to the sound quality, so I was confident it would do the same here.

Firstly, with the inner platter, I masked off the area where it comes into...

From an aesthetic point of view this was one of the more important tasks. I’d bought some iron on Zebrano wood veneer some years back which had – despite the warnings on the packaging – been stored in the garage.

The original plinth was in poor condition, bashed, cracked and worn, so the only option is to re veneer.

I started by filling in the worst of the lumps, especially in the corners. Then the plan was to spray the inside with Plasti...

Swapping the springs out was the first job, it a straightforward job, it’s pretty much a like for like swap and took less that fifteen minutes. You’ll need a socket set, you could use  an adjustable spanner, I wouldn’t use pliers as it may risk damaging the nuts.

The only hassle is getting the tension right when reassembling it. There might be some very clever techniques that help with this, but I found common sense and trial and error worked for me. Oh and obviously a spirit level.