But surely, I thought to myself, no one is interested in vinyl any more, so it'll never see the light of day. People wouldn't even know why you might want a 12in arm these days. It wasn't the lightweight classic 3012 used by jocks at radio stations, but a new 312 with tapered arm tube and solid headshell. ĭuring our visit to the SME factory some months ago I spotted an awesome looking 12in arm.
GARRARD ZERO 100 IDLER WHEEL FULL
Off went the 401 for major surgery, on a prayer that it would return in full health. No one, I noted, actually made any firm promises about this, but then it isn't something that you can promise. All the same, I decided I was prepared to spend quite a lot of money on the off-chance that my 401 would at least become useable. Together, they might just cure the rumble. Would that be possible? I doubted it mine was too badly afflicted. Then I saw a warehouse full of them awaiting export to Japan then I heard that Loricraft restored and built plinths for these turntables then I was told that if I phoned a number a man called Martin Bastin would be able to help me with a new, even heavier plinth for my 401 and - amazingly - an improved main bearing. One day, I thought, I'll find time to fix that turntable, then it'll take pride of place.It didn't quite turn out like that.Īs Hi-Fi World got underway I began to find others who thought the 301 and 401 were under-rated. Even in my most brutal and heartless of moments, the Garrard survived, sitting there quietly gathering dust - wanted, but only just.
When, after a few years, something has sat there unwanted and unused, it eventually goes to the great tip in the sky. Reaching the loft is preparatory to life in another world.
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I'm not sure I wanted to believe it myself so hoping that one I might learn how to suppress the huge 25Hz tone it produced, I carefully put it up into the loft.It only just survived. Only years earlier I had been crawling around the spectacular frame of Concorde, immersed in the finest engineering anyone could hope to see, and even with that as a contrast the 401 didn't look like the duffer it turned out to be.įor some reason, I never did contact Garrard to tell them my 401 rumbled like an express train. All that was back in prehistory, when, in the naivety of youth, I thought that life had just started when I got a job on Hi-Fi Answers magazine.I could not bring myself to give up on that Garrard it really was so beautifully engineered. That massive motor and the huge rubber idler wheel looked far too purposeful to be compromised in their activities by a few bits of real wood, I remember thinking - and so it was. I collected a 'solid wood' plinth from a company in Peterborough.
The massive cast platter with its machined-in strobe markings was incomparable and it has never really been bettered even now. It had an excellent reputation even then, back in the early Seventies, and boy did I ever want to own one. I remember the disappointment now and I never quite accepted that this wonderfully built machine, a Garrard 401, could really rumble so badly. I once bought a gorgeous new hi-fi turntable, the best there was - and it rumbled. Spurred by growing interest in the Garrard 401 turntable, Noel Keywood dusts the cobwebs off his own and brings it up to date.
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