Connoisseur BD1 kit project circa 1973

[acass]

That's a shame Mark you can still get the rubber bits, if you'd only known then.

I made a bit more headway with my project. After a bit of measuring and guess work I have trimmed a bit more out of the Maple block and I think it will work quite well. It means bolt heads will be visible on the top of the plinth but the 2 for the motor mount will be covered by the pulley drive cover and the ones for the switch assembly will be underneath the platter. I will give it a final sanding tomorrow and get some Tung oil on it.

The Bamboo Board prototype is sounding much better now I've found it a place on my equipment rack and done a little fettling on it.

 

[mark.king]

Yeah I should have kept it even if it was just to store until I could get round to it. Interesting thread though that takes me back

 

[acass]

I'm finished but not finished.

Its final coat of Varathane had dried and I had it up and running. It sounded just like I remembered it and I used it 10 to 12 hours then disaster. I turned it on this morning to be greeted by a hell of a hum and tracked that down to a broken wire on the head-shell. I had the arm rebuilt and rewired and when it was time to install the Shure V15 cartridge I had a real hard time pushing the terminals of the new wire on to the cartridge. The terminals on the wire had never been on a cartridge and were a super tight fit and in my struggle to connect them I must have damaged the wire as it looks like it snapped off at the solder joint, bummer.

Do we have any Long Island NY residents who can suggest a tried and trusted Technician in the area who can re-solder the connection and mount a new cartridge, I just bought the cartridge last night and it will be delivered next week. The cartridge is a Shure V15-RS which to all intents and purposes is a VST III the same body as the V15xMR but with an HE tip.

I will post some pictures of the finished project if I can remember how.

Alan

 

[acass]

Hopefully I can Get these in the right order.

 

[Chops54]

Looks nice

There are two sizes of cartridge tag. You may need the larger one?

 

[acass]

I had trouble with the Tung Oil, it took forever to dry and when it it was dry it just went back to looking like a drab old piece of wood. I also made the mistake of messing with it before it was completely dry and that left an unacceptable finish on it which I had to scrape off. Not having a cabinet scraper I had to improvise and used the edge of a 6" stainless steel pocket rule which took me down close enough to bare wood and then I gave it 3 coats of gloss Urethane and called it a day. A gloss finish leaves a wet look when dry and this brings out the grain in the wood. The finish has imperfections but you have to look for them and I was too scared to try to remove them with a final coat put on with a cloth incase I made it worse. All in all it will do, if the finish bothers me too much I will dismantle it and sand it lightly and give it the final coat with a cloth.

Unfortunately I cannot fix the wire I broke as I cannot see well enough to use a soldering iron with any delicacy so if we have anyone living around Long Island who knows a top class tech please speak up.

Thanks for the help, suggestions and support you have given me.

Alan.

P.S. Don't go away because we haven't finished yet.

 

[acass]

Hi Chops,

I asked the guy who did the rebuild and he said they were the right size. I would send it all back to him to fix but he is in Canada and there is at least a 6 week lead time so I'm looking for someone closer.