Quad 57 Restoration

These are almost finished, my father restored these so i have loads of pics of each stage of the restoration process, I'm sure they will be useful to others and will update this post as soon as i can

These are 95% complete, we are still in the process of deciding the final type of grill cloth to be used.

3012 Restoration

Placeholder

My 3012 Series II (Work in progress)

To be continued ...

Audio Grail Restored Garrard 301

Ok, so thats the introduction out of the way. The first piece of equipment i want to talk about is my turntable. I've never owned a turntable before but have put the hours in researching them and finally decided on a Garrard 301. There are multiple versions available but i decided on a grey hammer tone after seeing this picture.

I loved the grey on grey look with polished aluminium but couldn't afford the $8000 asking price of this particular model. So decided to pick up the parts and assemble my own.

The Grey Garrard 301 is also known as the Hammertone. It is a very rare beast and is very expensive. I have never seen a mint one come to market so decided to get a beat up one and have it restored. So i purchased the following on Ebay. The purchase included the 301, 3009 tonearm and a very fragile and light weight plinth which fell apart in my hands during unboxing.

Here are a few pics of my turntable ...

I asked for a close up of the plates, this was important to me as they would be hard to restore.

I was most concerned about the centre plate but it looked in good condition so i bit the bullet and purchased the turntable.

Here are a few things i missed that potential buyers should be aware of ..

The platter on my Garrard was the upgraded Strobe platter, i didn't notice this at the time but i preferred the Hammertone platter on this model. The Strobe platter looks great on the cream Garrard 301 but in my opinion makes the Grey 301 look a little modern and not quite right.

So i started considering my options, these involved grinding off the strobe markings and then painting the platter, or wait until a Grey 301 Platter came along. I waited a few months and one popped up on Ebay, great problem solved, until it went for £300!

In the end i purchased a second 301 (this time a cream oil bearing version) for £650 with a non strobe black platter. The platters were then swapped which actually worked out pretty well because the Cream 301 looks better with the strobe platter in my opinion.

Hunt for a Garrard Restorer!

I emailed 4 or 5 different people for quotes and pictures of their previous restoration jobs. I picked Matthew Taylor of Audio Grail to carry out my restoration because his previous restorations looked phenomenal.  Over the course of 2 weeks i sent Matt approx 15 emails and all my questions were answered very quickly. Matt was a pleasure to deal with and made the decision easy. These turntables are over engineered and restoring one is a time consuming task. His price was similar to the other quotes but based on his customer services and his previous restorations i was confident i'd found the right man.

The main reason i chose Matt was because of the quality of his Hammertone paint. It's not as easy as buying a can of Grey Hammerite paint from B&Q. I know this because i bought some with the original intention of restoring the Garrard myself. I tested the paint on the inside of a biscuit tin lid and the colour was too light and didn't look authentic.

Matt has invested a lot of time and money to get the paint just right and this is what separated Audio Grail from the other options on the table.

So i gave the unit to Matt and crossed my fingers. A few weeks later my 301 arrived and i was chuffed to bits with the restoration. The paint job was perfect and Matt really did a good job on the plates. I discussed the option of buying replacement plates prior to the restoration because i didn't think they were going to come out so well. They look great and i'm glad i kept them original.

Its hard to put into words how good these things look in the flesh, it looks like its just rolled out of the factory. Here's some pics ...

to be continued ...

Introduction

Hi My name is Peter and i'm based in the UK. I'm 30, work in IT and for the last 5 years or so, my main hobby has been Hifi. I have recently moved into a larger house and finally have a man cave in which to build my first audio system. I wanted to start this blog to document the work i've done and hopefully help people who decide to build similar systems. I am building a classic vintage system which will involve quite a lot of restoration work. I will go into detail about the work carried out and the problems i've hit along the way. I am still about 6 months away from completing all the work but have 90% of the equipment purchased. I will blog about each piece of equipment seperatly but here is a quick breakdown. Equipment List Source Grey Hammertone Garrard 301 (Analog) Custom Built Silent Media PC (Digital) Cary Xciter DAC Amp Radford SC3 Preamp Radford STA15 MKII Power Amp Speakers Quad 57