Thanks for taking a look and please excuse the rambling preamble.
A couple of months ago I picked up a Td150 for £30 inc postage out of curiosity really as I have never owned one. It was sold as spare or repairs as it had a few problems - motor didn't run properly, plinth was coming apart and it had no headshell.
Well I fixed the motor, the rest of the electrics and mechanics work perfectly and the arm seems intact apart from a lack of a headshell and bias weight so I put it under my bed and kinda forgot about it.
Just before Xmas I decided to do a project using only those items I already had in, partly to use up the bits of spares I'm keeping for a 'rainy day', partly to see what is possible with the minimum of fresh outlay but also because I wanted to try my hand at making a plinth. I've restored, renovated, repaired & modified numerous plinths over the years but never actually made one.
After a thorough search of my various storage boxes, cubby holes and under the bed I came up with the following motley selection of parts:
Turntable
TD150 toplate, subchasis, motor, outerplatter, springs etc; Linn grommets; TD125 inner platter; bearing thrust pad from one of Joel's TD125 service packs; 5mm PVC foam for platter mat
Plinth
couple of pieces of 18mm Plywood (exterior use quality, not the high grade B/BB grade);M4 bolts & M4 nut inserts,all-in-one Primer, aerosol primer; two cans black satin spray paint; tin black satin paint.
Tonearm boards
1x A3 sheets of 2mm & 3mm Black acrylic / perspex, various sized pieces of 5mm white PVC foam.
Tonearm
variety of parts from Jelco tonearms - S shaped arm tube, upper bearing, Counterweight (115g) & counterweight stub from a LAD/370D; Armpillar from a 370H; Counterweight (95g),bearing housing, arm collar, arm pillar sleeve & main bearing from Mission 774LC, JVC headshell without finger lift, 1/2 can black satin spray paint for metal, cardas internal wire, OFC Van Damme cable, pair of REAN RCA phono plugs.
Decided to build a plinth that'll be wider than than the original TD150's (as well as sturdier) so it will be able to use a wider variety of arms and to design it so it had the outward appearance of a TD160 Super / TD166 etc black plinth. The old TD150 plinth was only loosely held together by 2 of the corner blocks and the screws of the toplate. But having not tried to make a right angled corner for over 30 years I used this (2 & a bit sides of it) as a template that would clad (glued & screwed) the inner edge of my new plinth:
(the other 1 & 1/2 sides are 6mm plywood)
I made my own set of 4 corner braces from 18mm ply (glued & screwed). The lip the top plate screws to runs continuously now so the whole top plate is supported by it (glued & nailed)
Instead of just screwing the top plate down with wood screws I'm using M4 bolts and inserts.
I added an extra insert so I can run a 30mm M4 bolt through the lip next to the cable exit hole to dress the tonearm cable in a P-clip a la Linn.
Hopefully you can see that the top plate fits perfectly into the 'new' plinth.
The baseboard is 18mm plywood. It's not drilled to allow access to the suspension springs but because when I used this thickness of ply for baseboards before I found the TT's sound is 'better' with a couple of holes drilled through. They correspond to the position of suspension, bearing and tonearm just for aesthetics.
The tonearm has been sprayed satin black and the headshell polished to a shine.
I'll finishing wiring it up later and most likely mount it on my TD125 for a while to run it in while I finish the rest.
I've made 2 tonearm boards but they're only glued so far and nothing to see as yet. They're 3mm acrylic/5mm PVC foam/2mm acrylic. The 2mm acrylic is 1cm narrower than the other 2 layers so it will work the same as the original when screwed to the subchassis.
I've also added 2 extra screw holes to the subchassis so the armboard is fixed tightly.
This going to be a heavy turntable, the plinth alone weighs 3kg which is twice as much as a Linn plinth.
