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Another great build Ant, I like the oak veneer.

The cream top plate and oak veneer work really well, Ant

Betty- the hot one from the flintstones as that’s “Yabba a dabba dooooo“

got some more done over the last few days, now has an arm fitted

Bte designs TYPE 3 GL75/88 Acos lustre gst-1 by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

The arm board has taken 3 days to do, problem with everyone being at home is that there are so many people out in their gardens it seems rude of me to work as normal and use the router/saws ect outside and deafen everyone. So I've done a little bit each day for a short period of time so I don't antagonise someone.

Bte designs TYPE 3 GL75/88 Acos lustre gst-1 by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

The acos arm and base is rather tall, so it had to have some special attention paid. The board is a laminate of oak and sapele to give it some inherent damping, 34mm thick to also give it some mass. The arm needs to be 12mm lower than the top face of the plinth, so to facilitate this, rather than just sinking the board in i decided to machine a recess in the board itsself. in the pics its sat about a mil below the face of the plinth, the grommets havent arrived yet

Bte designs TYPE 3 GL75/88 Acos lustre gst-1 by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

This was an arse, as the recess width means that a router won't stand on the top face without the base dropping into the recess....
so, i had to hog out as much as i could with a router then use my little proxxon milling machine to mill the sides to the right dimensions, then use a little teeny 3mm end mill to mill the bottom of the recess flat. worked perfectly, but was tedious and took a good 2 hours to do. I also need to mill another small recess about half the depth of the main one in the front right wall of the recess. this is to clear the flag on the height adjustment bar.

so one day to glue up and clamp the board, another day to machine the blank to the right dimensions, another to mill out the recess. so if we discount the gluing up which i just left overnight, this board has taken about 6 hours work........
if its worth doing, its worth doing properly though....

and its finished. I think.

Bte designs TYPE 3 lenco by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

the last few little jobs seem to have taken an age to do, due to orders from swmbo, and a delay on postage of various little bits and pieces. no problem with that, i was talking to a postie who is the dad of one of my sons school friends, he says it is utterly mad, worse than christmas he put it. the posties are all doing huge amounts of overtime just to try keep up with demand. another underappreciated job.

I'm glad I decided to make the motor unit as clean as possible by filling in the screw holes for the speed adjust and binning the detents, and making a third mounting stud inside the pan of the deck so that I didn't have to screw it down. I like the clean and unfussy look to the motor unit

Fitted it with mi dads audio technica vm540ml which i borrowed to try the stylus on my at150sa. sounds almost identical, so when i have to replace the stylus ill get a vmn40 for it. The record on it is one I use as a setup record as Its buggered. No sense using a nice clean record when I have a grotty one that swmbo bought another copy of anyway

Bte designs TYPE 3 lenco by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

The acos lustre gst-1 is an absolute doddle to set up, the base adjusts to get the s/p distance perfect which i was able to check with the dr feickert protractor, height adjustment is laughably easy, and it has azimuth adjustment which i didnt know it had. it has all adjustments covered beautifully. lovely piece of kit.

The platter mat is a nice 5mm thick nitrile rubber mat I got for it, was not bad money at £19.50, and is much better than the Nasty original one I had for it. Again a nice little addition.

Bte designs TYPE 3 lenco by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

the arm board oak has blended in really nicely with the oak veneer when its all been polished, and as i deliberately had the grain running at 90 degrees to the veneer grain it breaks the sea of oak up nicely without having to use another material.
I also modified the aluminium feet by fitting a threaded stud into them and inserts into the plinth so they are now height adjustable.

and lastly i got some small badges made for this one, the one mi dad has and the one savvypaul has. this one is 'the lady', mi dads is 'the little lady, and pauls is as he nicknamed it, 'the grand lady'. Need to send that badge on to Paul at some point

haven't tested it yet though other than to spin it up after rebuilding the bearing, motor and idler. Which was fine.
should sound alright

Got it in place and set up, the motor wants a tweak of the nose bearing to quieten it a little which I thought it might. Not intrusive noise, just there when you are close enough to it to smell it.
It sounds really even handed, very quiet at the speaker, no rumble at all.
Had to shift the teardrop type 2, I really need more space..... Dunno how though.
I like it

the deck has been in place for about a week now, i haven't listened to it extensively, but i haven't had to to like it. It is very very even top to bottom, more so than any of the other decks. the jbe has a very slight edge, is a little matter of fact in character, the jvc a little warm with a slight blur compared to the jbe, the type 2 has a little bloom compared to this one. The type 3 'just plays'. honestly, its shown up some other slight inadequacies in the type 2 teardrop, I have a good idea as to what to do with it to cure these, but that's for when i get round to it

playing some kraftwerk

Bte designs TYPE 3 lenco, gst-1, vm540ml by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

Im dead chuffed with it, im glad i decided to add these to my line of decks, going forward ill use this template with the curved rear rather than square as it makes it so much easier to position the arm without a right rear corner stuck out, and it means there is no warping of the chassis plate from heat when welding the new rear edge in.

i kind of understand why the other 2 went straight away now

I also sorted the 'space problem'.

couple of days work to do, i made myself a new rack from two huge 6'6" x 3' deep old desks i was given. i actually have four, one is earmarked for mi dad when he gets round to sorting out his 'hobby room' (shithole), the other, i don't know yet....

one top, the other is identical with a hardwood half round edge on both sides

A huge hifi and record rack made from 2 old desks by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

cut in half and to length with the circular saw.

A huge hifi and record rack made from 2 old desks by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

second one done

A huge hifi and record rack made from 2 old desks by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

sides were cut from the 2 original sides of one desk

A huge hifi and record rack made from 2 old desks by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

lopped down to the correct dimensions

A huge hifi and record rack made from 2 old desks by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

and assembled with shelf bracing made from the other 2 desk sides put in to bear the weight of all the lps

A huge hifi and record rack made from 2 old desks by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

and in place and filled with stuff. It might look feckin oooge and monstrous in the above photo, but it's actually about 20mm less tall and only about 150mm longer than what was there before which you can also see in the photo.

Big rack thing by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

The desks are all 25mm high density chipboard with a real wood santos rosewood veneer, the bloody thing weighs much more than i do, there is however, space for 4 turntables. note the space between the lenco and the jvc. wonder what could fit in there.......

Nice work Ant

You do realise you need to make another as you’ve filled that one already

Nice work mate...and room for some more rare Cure 12" singles

Don't gete started on cure singles.........
I can't say anything though, been buying as many pat metheny group albums as I can get my hands on.....