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This is my third Lenco GL75 build. The first was given to me, plinth, turntable and arm, all I had to do, basically, was file out a hole in the top plate and lift mechanism plate underneath to take the arm.
The second is a slate plinth but a stonemason built the 4 layers of the plinth for me.
But this third one was all my own work. And it was not without problems, ‘trial and error’ being the operative modus operandi here.
Last September I had this idea that it would be nice to have another Lenco with an arm that had a detachable headshell so I could swap cartridges easily. I figured I’d also like to have a cartridge/headshell that played 78’s. Both arms on the GL75’s I had running at the time had fixed headshells. And they still have.
I saw an original GL75 for sale on Ebay, bid, and ‘won’ it for £110.00, which was quite a bit more expensive than GL75’s had sold for prior to that date, perhaps that was the turning point, Sept ’12, when they started to fetch more money. I drove to Essex (near Southend somewhere) from SE London to collect and pay cash for it, it was a bog standard original, original plinth, no cartridge, worn and scratched dust cover, and original arm with the headshell missing the little lift arm.
Got it home, dismantled everything, serviced bearing and motor, put back together, mounted a Shure M75ED and tried with the original arm. It sounded quite awful to be honest, especially compared to the two builds I had running. Most certainly need new V-Blocks and original plinth didn’t help, I suspect. But it worked, no motor/plinth noise, no vibration and stable speeds.
Decided to get different arm and build plinth. From an audio forum I acquired a rather battered Linn LVX1 arm with sagging rear part of arm (not by much but it did/does sag a little bit). It was a good price though. Bought a Jelco cable to use with the Linn arm, which actually cost me more than I paid for the arm. And this cable is considered a budget option.
So, I was getting there. Downloaded the plinth template from a Lenco turntable forum in PDF format and got a local printer to print out a couple of full size copies. Visited B & Q and had one sheet of 18mm plywood cut into enough oblongs to make two plinths. Which as it turns out was just as well cos I managed to make a complete pigs ear of my first attempt and abandoned it and started again.
This time around, I didn’t trust the templates I had but rather offered up cardboard templates to the turntable which had the studding for mounting fitted, made lots of measurements, took my time and cut to shape what were basically my own designs for each layer. I used one top layer of 12mm thickness and six more layers of 18,mm thickness.
This turned out to be a mistake, I didn’t fully allow for speed change and mains switch mechanism movements and had to modify my finished plinth with hammer and chisels. I’m fairly sure if I’d used 18mm ply for the top layer rather than 12mm I wouldn’t have to have done that. Chalk a few up for experience and quote ‘trial and error’.
Eventually finished plinth, planed all sides, used some wood filler to fill undulations in plywood and sprayed navy blue satin. I had sprayed the GL75 top plate gloss light blue, the idea being a kind of match between two shades of blue and a satin/gloss pairing. The end result is nothing original, it won’t win any design awards, but it is functional, it works and I like the look of it so that’s good enough for me. In this life I was never cut out to be a carpenter, that’s just the way it is, though I wish my woodworking skills were better.
There seemed to be lots of what I considered minor details that held me up, for instance finding three short bolts to mount the Linn arm took a great deal of time. But eventually it has all come together.
I already had two MM cartridges, a Nagaoka MP110 and a Shure M55E. I bought new styluses for them both, the Nagaoka stylus was £50 (not a genuine Nagaoka, but a substitute) and the Shure M55E stylus was £15.00.
For 78’s I bought a Shure M78S which cost £50. I am using the original Linn headshell and two headshells I already had which I bought from Maplins some years ago. The Maplins headshells are surprisingly rather good.
I have been very pleasantly surprised at just how good this build sounds, I didn’t expect it to be as good as my previous two builds (using Denon DL103 & DL110 respectively) but it’s almost up there on a par with them. In fact I feel if I fitted a MC cartridge to it, it may even outshine the other two builds.
The Nagaoka cartridge sounds very good indeed, the Shure M55E, however, to my ears, sounds a little lifeless and flat, it brings out detail ok, but the bass is a bit woolly and there isn’t much ‘sparkle’ for want of a better description.
The big revelation to me, however, is how good 78’s sound. I have just eleven shellac records, mostly worn but all playable. I don’t care much for any of their musical content really, they are just recordings I’ve picked up cheap whilst doing this build, but I am so surprised how good they sound. The Shure 78S is wired mono. There is actually some very nice bass here and a surprising clarity of sound. And most of all – a huge presence. Close your eyes and the musicians are in the room with you. I hadn’t expected that from 78’s. Or mono, for that matter.
Now to gather some more 78’s, I really would like some rock and roll and skiffle 78’s, Lonnie Donegan would be good. Trouble is I don’t know where to look, the local junk shop has lots of them but the titles aren’t mostly to my liking, they’re not in very good condition and the owner wants £2.50 each for them. Therefore a new quest has started – source 78’s
The phono stage I’m currently using is a cheap and nasty I bought some 20 to 25 years ago. It works but my next task is to build a valve RIAA stage I have all the parts for, I really have to get it together to do that thing.
Here’s some pix of this build. This is seriously my last GL75 build, I may make another plinth or two but I am definitely not buying any more GL75’s, three is quite enough, two in my living room (One primarily for 78’s) and one in my bedroom, mostly for recording from vinyl to digital.
Thanks for looking
Pix:
Plinth layers:
Top two layers:
Middle two layers:
Bottom 4 layers:
Shure M55E:
Cheap n nasty phono stage:
The second is a slate plinth but a stonemason built the 4 layers of the plinth for me.
But this third one was all my own work. And it was not without problems, ‘trial and error’ being the operative modus operandi here.
Last September I had this idea that it would be nice to have another Lenco with an arm that had a detachable headshell so I could swap cartridges easily. I figured I’d also like to have a cartridge/headshell that played 78’s. Both arms on the GL75’s I had running at the time had fixed headshells. And they still have.
I saw an original GL75 for sale on Ebay, bid, and ‘won’ it for £110.00, which was quite a bit more expensive than GL75’s had sold for prior to that date, perhaps that was the turning point, Sept ’12, when they started to fetch more money. I drove to Essex (near Southend somewhere) from SE London to collect and pay cash for it, it was a bog standard original, original plinth, no cartridge, worn and scratched dust cover, and original arm with the headshell missing the little lift arm.
Got it home, dismantled everything, serviced bearing and motor, put back together, mounted a Shure M75ED and tried with the original arm. It sounded quite awful to be honest, especially compared to the two builds I had running. Most certainly need new V-Blocks and original plinth didn’t help, I suspect. But it worked, no motor/plinth noise, no vibration and stable speeds.
Decided to get different arm and build plinth. From an audio forum I acquired a rather battered Linn LVX1 arm with sagging rear part of arm (not by much but it did/does sag a little bit). It was a good price though. Bought a Jelco cable to use with the Linn arm, which actually cost me more than I paid for the arm. And this cable is considered a budget option.
So, I was getting there. Downloaded the plinth template from a Lenco turntable forum in PDF format and got a local printer to print out a couple of full size copies. Visited B & Q and had one sheet of 18mm plywood cut into enough oblongs to make two plinths. Which as it turns out was just as well cos I managed to make a complete pigs ear of my first attempt and abandoned it and started again.
This time around, I didn’t trust the templates I had but rather offered up cardboard templates to the turntable which had the studding for mounting fitted, made lots of measurements, took my time and cut to shape what were basically my own designs for each layer. I used one top layer of 12mm thickness and six more layers of 18,mm thickness.
This turned out to be a mistake, I didn’t fully allow for speed change and mains switch mechanism movements and had to modify my finished plinth with hammer and chisels. I’m fairly sure if I’d used 18mm ply for the top layer rather than 12mm I wouldn’t have to have done that. Chalk a few up for experience and quote ‘trial and error’.
Eventually finished plinth, planed all sides, used some wood filler to fill undulations in plywood and sprayed navy blue satin. I had sprayed the GL75 top plate gloss light blue, the idea being a kind of match between two shades of blue and a satin/gloss pairing. The end result is nothing original, it won’t win any design awards, but it is functional, it works and I like the look of it so that’s good enough for me. In this life I was never cut out to be a carpenter, that’s just the way it is, though I wish my woodworking skills were better.
There seemed to be lots of what I considered minor details that held me up, for instance finding three short bolts to mount the Linn arm took a great deal of time. But eventually it has all come together.
I already had two MM cartridges, a Nagaoka MP110 and a Shure M55E. I bought new styluses for them both, the Nagaoka stylus was £50 (not a genuine Nagaoka, but a substitute) and the Shure M55E stylus was £15.00.
For 78’s I bought a Shure M78S which cost £50. I am using the original Linn headshell and two headshells I already had which I bought from Maplins some years ago. The Maplins headshells are surprisingly rather good.
I have been very pleasantly surprised at just how good this build sounds, I didn’t expect it to be as good as my previous two builds (using Denon DL103 & DL110 respectively) but it’s almost up there on a par with them. In fact I feel if I fitted a MC cartridge to it, it may even outshine the other two builds.
The Nagaoka cartridge sounds very good indeed, the Shure M55E, however, to my ears, sounds a little lifeless and flat, it brings out detail ok, but the bass is a bit woolly and there isn’t much ‘sparkle’ for want of a better description.
The big revelation to me, however, is how good 78’s sound. I have just eleven shellac records, mostly worn but all playable. I don’t care much for any of their musical content really, they are just recordings I’ve picked up cheap whilst doing this build, but I am so surprised how good they sound. The Shure 78S is wired mono. There is actually some very nice bass here and a surprising clarity of sound. And most of all – a huge presence. Close your eyes and the musicians are in the room with you. I hadn’t expected that from 78’s. Or mono, for that matter.
Now to gather some more 78’s, I really would like some rock and roll and skiffle 78’s, Lonnie Donegan would be good. Trouble is I don’t know where to look, the local junk shop has lots of them but the titles aren’t mostly to my liking, they’re not in very good condition and the owner wants £2.50 each for them. Therefore a new quest has started – source 78’s
The phono stage I’m currently using is a cheap and nasty I bought some 20 to 25 years ago. It works but my next task is to build a valve RIAA stage I have all the parts for, I really have to get it together to do that thing.
Here’s some pix of this build. This is seriously my last GL75 build, I may make another plinth or two but I am definitely not buying any more GL75’s, three is quite enough, two in my living room (One primarily for 78’s) and one in my bedroom, mostly for recording from vinyl to digital.
Thanks for looking
Pix:
Plinth layers:
Top two layers:
Middle two layers:
Bottom 4 layers:
Shure M55E:
Cheap n nasty phono stage:
Bloody great mate, I tip my hat to you I wouldn't have the patience or the technical ability to do what you have done
