-edible zone-
No.6435 Overview
Starting Line
Arrival Deconstruction
Beneath Decks
First Night's Spin
Listening to Plinths
Motor
System:The Tonearm Tweaks
Articles
Bookshelf Transit
*
BENEATH DECKS.
The
bearing is far from the end of the task here though. Every bit of
linkage and idler-positioning gear below the plinth level has to be
cleaned, loosened up, and each juncture either oiled or greased. One
article by Loricraft cautions that the various armatures that comprise
the linkage are cadmium-plated, so these should get minimal handling,
and contact with skin isn't advisable.
You can envision the project
here as involving three connected fields :
…The idler-drive apparatus
…The speed-change apparatus
…The pitch-adjust apparatus
Each will have it's own characteristics, and depend a lot on what's
happened to the turntable between, say, the Suez Crisis and the second
marriage of Charles Windsor. A lot of territory to account for …
It's a very individualized question here, of what exactly has been
used in the fifty years of any given 301... did it evaporate, harden,
bind-up or impede the mechanism, or were the right lubes used over time
.... if there are no red flags, if it's all loose and operable, then
there's no reason not to proceed to the spinup.
In my case some form
of beige gunk was used, very liberally, and the years were not kind. The
beige stuff in 2005 would most closely compare to the texture and
viscosity of a rawhide doggy treat.
An obvious place to start is with
a chopstick or a toothpick and knock out any spare dried-out lube
chunks. Most often a clean-off with lighter fluid followed with a
mop-down with sewing-machine oil did well for the obvious "oil" points.
For the heavier "grease" points, I'd continue from there with a
back-and-forth loosening up of the specific movement for a few minutes,
then off with the sewing oil, allowing any excess to soak into a clean
paper towel. Then the lithium grease, at first overdoing it and once
'worked-in', a further cleanup of excess. The 401 manual, not the 301,
notes under Maintenance that “…the lever pivots on the underside of the
base plate… should be lightly oiled and sliding surfaces… should be
smeared with a light grease. “ The earlier manuals don’t mention it, but
I take the 401 info to double for the 301’s underdeck surfaces.
MOTOR
... As noted before, the motor condition of my 301 was well
above expectation, and I've decided a few drops of motor-assembly oil in
the upper and lower bearing slots will do for a trial run. The lower
bearing is a little bit of a shot-in-the-dark, since you're kind of
firing up into it in order to let it trickle down to the center bearing
pad. But it gets there via gravity eventually.
If there were the
slightest hesitance or binding in the motor, I wouldn't feel right about
this, but somehow I think that this turntable hasn't been touched, other
than possibly a drop of oil every other ten or twenty years ----- and as
such, is perfectly usable.
PLINTH
If you have a
basic working relationship with a computer and printer, you can print up
an exact, life-sized template for a Garrard 301 plinth. I taped my
template sections to a window in order to line it up with light coming
through the paper from outside. There are actual-size measurement
segments in inches on the template that you can double-check with a
ruler once you’ve got it printed at the right scale. ( The template I
was using, in Acrobat Reader, was printing properly at approximately
95.49% of the original diagram’s size. Obviously this will vary but that
gives you the idea of tweaking it down to the precise sizing.)
At
this point, I was still anxious to see if this project would have any
potential, so the first platform I came up with is really just a jig in
which to safely place the 301 mechanism for adjustments and lubing. As
well as a first listen, which was by now imminent. The open-frame jig I
ended up with was all that was necessary. The ‘armboard’ is basically a
quick way to attach or detach an arm. The most useful part of the jig is
the ability to work on the 301 from any side or even upside-down while
avoiding damage to the mechanism below, or to the controls or spindle on
top.
Diagram For Grease Bearing 301
This long, cautious expedition through the
mid-fifties intricacies of the 301 may have initially tempered my
enthusiasm somewhat. There is a distinct sense of dragging a snoring
dinosaur out of it’s lair --- one that you’re going to have to civilize
and domesticate by force of will. But I’d been as cautious and complete
as I could be, and I was now past ready to go.