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Lube, oil and filter
Hopefully by now you've found your own Garrard 301 using my guidance from the first Garrard Project installment, read the manual a couple of times (if you don't have one, e-mail me and I'll send you a copy of mine), and performed the maintenance I suggested: Check to make sure the transit screws are unscrewed so the motor will float freely on its suspension, oil or grease the bearing and generally perform all the maintenance as indicated in the manual. You should now have a mint Garrard 301 to use as the basis for your project.

The most common problems with Garrard 301s are broken switch knobs and deteriorated rubber platter mats. My switch knobs were luckily in perfect condition but if you are unfortunate enough to break one, don't fret too much. Factory replacements are nonexistent of course -- the table being out of production for many years -- but I have discovered that there are almost always a few NOS knobs on eBay. If you don't see any the first time you check, keep checking back - they will appear. My rubber mat had succumbed to father time and I threw it away. You don't have to use an original-style mat and you can substitute all kinds of felt, cork or rubber mats for the original as you prefer. I wanted to stick with an original-style mat for its historic appearance and found a fellow on eBay, Mirko, who makes beautiful reproductions of the originals ($45). Mirko also makes perfect reproductions of idler wheels ($36) if you need one. Just search for "Garrard 301" on eBay and you should have all kinds of goodies pop up.

The plinth
When the idea first occurred to me of doing the Garrard Project for 6moons readers, I knew I was going to need help designing and building a plinth because I have zero knowledge about woodworking and no access to woodworking gear. While considering what do to do about this little plinth problem, I thought of Terry Cain who builds the beautiful Cain & Cain loudspeakers in his Walla²/Washington manufacturing facility that is a mere two hours from where I live. Terry is a lifer woodworker and HiFi nut, one of the lucky few who have figured out how to combine their professional skills with their HiFi passions and make a living at it. I contacted Terry to see if he would be willing to help me build a plinth for the Garrard Project at a price I could afford. My price range was $1,000 or less, which I figured was a good match for what I paid for my 301 on eBay. While I had met Terry a few times, I didn't know him well and was a little worried he might think of my whole Garrard Project as a silly waste of his time. When I explained my vision, Terry too became excited and luckily agreed to collaborate with me on a plinth design and keep it within my audio everyman's budget.


My first step was to consider all the other Garrard plinths that I could find information on. I e-mailed Terry photos and descriptions of every Garrard plinth implementation I could find. People build plinths from wood composites, birch ply, hardwoods, plastics and stone in just about every configuration imaginable. Some believe plinths should be massive affairs that absorb energy from the motor while others believe plinths should be light to dissipate energy quickly. Some people believe in placing damping layers into the plinth to isolate vibration, others say it ruins the sound - and so forth.

Terry and I talked and thought a lot about the different design philosophies over a number of months, after which he worked up some concept drawings of what he thought might work well. In a sudden flurry of activity, Terry then did something completely different and inspired. Terry and I both like solid hardwoods for their beauty. I in particular fancy those hardwoods that are used as tone woods for musical instruments - maple, rosewood and walnut. It makes sense to me to treat an audio device like you would a musical instrument rather than merely a piece of industrial equipment. Terry crafted the base and top plate of my plinth from solid maple. For the purposes of decoupling the base, top plate and armboards from motor vibration, the pillars were made of solid walnut fitted with adjustable brass leveling cones. Walnut is a fabulous tone wood that produces a warm, clear and musical sound, while maple produces a somewhat dry, clear and articulate sound. After Terry crafted the maple & walnut pieces and machined the brass fittings, he assembled the plinth and installed the Garrard motor assembly into the top plate. Terry covered the top of the maple and walnut arm board with hand-hammered brass for a nice appearance and a solid platform for mounting a tonearm.

Pete Riggle installed one of his VTAF devices into the arm board to allow for quick tonearm changes between the Origin Live-modded Rega RB250 and the Origin Live Silver for comparison purposes. The primary purpose of the VTAF is to be able to adjust vertical tracking angle on the fly but the VTAF bearing also decouples the tonearm from the arm board for mo' betta sound than the normal rigid approach to tonearm mounting. For reviewer types, the main attraction of the VTAF is to be able to swap out tonearms as quickly as one-two-three. All I had to do during listening comparisons was to unplug the Origin Live-modified Rega RB250 and lift it out of the VTAF, then drop and plug in the Origin Live Silver arm and I was ready to roll. Since I had identical Denon 103 cartridges mounted to all the arms, it took about as long to do as it takes to read the last few sentences describing the process - sweet!

After receiving the SME 3012 tonearm from Jonathan Halpern, Terry added a second arm board to the rear of the plinth's top plate. The design of the SME excludes using a VTAF so it was mounted rigidly. After everything was installed, we leveled the table using the adjustable brass cones on the base and plinth top plate, which incidentally also helped to isolate the top plate from the base and the base from the surface it's sitting on, and all of them from motor noise. As an artistic touch, Terry made the brass adjusters in the onion-shape of the domes on Russian churches. The Garrard plinth that Terry made might have been intended to function as a test mule that allowed ultimate flexibility but Terry also styled it to look like a thoroughbred - the best of both worlds!