Show us your Sondek

Great story DAL. That would be a great wedding present too! :ok_hand:t5:

I’d still do a photograph of the deck in it’s current form as it’ll make a nice comparison to the new look.

Cheers, Rack. :+1:t5:

I recommend you speak to Peter Swain at @Cymbiosis about Lingo options. He often has these in stock from customers who’ve traded in theirs while upgrading to Radikal. Have a look at the pre-loved items on his website too.

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Suppose I should show mine. Acquired in 1994 from a work colleague. Very sad story - he had been burgled several times and insurance had got him to this deck (plus 52 and 250 - don’t know what speakers) but said they would no longer cover him. So we did a deal - my Axis plus £1200 or so. Two weeks later the Axis was nicked and he had no music afterwards - sad because it was his only hobby.

Anyway - it is Lingo 1 (serviced), ekos, dv -20X, circus, prefix. Keep considering spending some money (to do justice to it parallel to the ND555) but (a) should get record cleaning machine first and (b) many of my records are rubbish pressings from the 80s and early 90s. Love the Harban plinths but am sort of attached to the plinth I have. Don’t know whether to go Lingo 4 or the higher levels, get urika perhaps - then there are all the ancillary bits (karousel seems interesting and sounding like a corner on the Nurburgring sounds :sunglasses: ) all a bit of a minefield when I would also need to expand the vinyl collection (I do keep buying albums but rarely play them) to do justice to spending more

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Karousel a must then all depends on budget imho

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Welcome, @kevBeel . Is that the DL 103? Great cartridge. :sunglasses:

It is. A stop gap that turned into long term.

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Serviced MK1 Lingos are a definite and significant improvement over no Lingo.

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I bought my Manticore Mantra with Linn LV-X tonearm from them, which was then upgraded to a Sondek.

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Was that Standens before it became Tonbridge Hi-Fi Consultants? Standens was opposite what used to be Woolworths and pretty much next to what used to be the Post Office. I bought a Technics SU-7300 integrated amplifier from there when I was at school there.

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I bought a Technics su7300 back in the day, sold it to our neighbours, they still use it apparently. Not a bad amp, eventually replaced with a Naim 62/90.

@Clive - No, Standens was a different shop (I bought a Denon cassette deck there in '86, and I got my secondhand Heybrook TT2 there in January 1985). When it was in Tonbridge, Tonbridge Hi-Fi Consultants was at the other end of town, up near Quarry Hill.

PS - What school did you go to?

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Judd. We’ll soon be accused of drifting off topic, so here’s a picture of my LP12 in a previous incarnation:

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@Clive - I was at Skinners’, 1974-81. I’d never heard of an LP12 back then, though my mate’s parents had a Micro Seikei turntable, which everyone lusted after. Japanese hi-fi like Sony, Pioneer, Sansui etc was the posh stuff us kids aspired to (easy to do when most of the home-grown brands we’d heard of were rubbish like Amstrad, Ferguson, Bush etc).

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lovely grain on the plinth

This is how my Sondek looked in 2009, this photo taken following a trip to @Cymbiosis where Peter kindly changed an unusual Rega-compatible arm-board ( that a lumberjack had fashioned out of a plank of walnut :joy: ) to a genuine Linn one.
But here it still sports a Henk cherry plinth, and a Rega RB200 arm with AT95E cart.

TBH i enjoyed the CDI player far more in those days :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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@Mr.Tibbs, my platter is quite tired looking so I might try the same. I have some Auto Glym Extra Gloss so have ordered some of the Solvol polishing paste. Can I ask what you used to remove the residual lacquer?

Best regards, Mark

Unfortunately it only lasted a few months. In the picture the subchassis was a Kore/A. Peter then placed an order for a batch of Keel/A, which were quite scarce - Linn only has them manufactured when there is a reasonable order volume and there can’t be many Aro owners left still wanting one. So I jumped at the opportunity to get one and was going to have it fitted under this plinth, but calamity struck when I dropped an LP and took a slice out of the edge of the plinth. I knew I wouldn’t be happy having a Keel installed in a marked plinth, so the plinth was changed too for the Chris Harban wenge plinth shown in the earlier picture. An expensive mistake. Now I make a point of stepping back from the turntable before flipping an album over.

Mark, I used Nitromors paint and varnish remover, brushed on quite sparingly and rinsed off as soon as the lacquer started to blister. Any residual lacquer can be removed by a repeat treatment if necessary. It’s best not to leave the stripper on for more than a couple of minutes to avoid any risk of staining the metal. Mask off the platter top and inside the rim before starting, to prevent the chemical going astray.

Edit: Just found a pic of your deck. The platter doesn’t look too bad - unless the pic doesn’t show it well enough ? It’s dulled with age but they do that. Just be aware there is no going back once you strip the lacquer! By the way the Autosol will bring up the top plate like new.

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@Mr.Tibbs Here are a couple of close up shots. I was thinking of replacing the outer platter when I get the Karousel done, which seems like an inevitability now. But if this relatively cheap fix does the job then I’ll give it a go. Little project for me anyway. Thanks for the response.

Ok I see the problem now. Mine was worse, but older platters are more prone to this kind of discolouration. Here’s a close up pic of mine where you can still see the little pockmarks embedded in the surface. No amount of polishing will remove those, but you can polish out the larger blemishes which are causes by failing lacquer allowing surface oxidation. Good luck!

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