Heavily Modified Ariston RD80/DIY TT Shelf - Just Completed...

My obsession with modifying this poor thing started about a day after I bought it, about 4 years ago. It was a bog standard RD80SL with the evil tin plinth base of doom, and had the motor coupled directly to the plinth top plate. The motor caused some nasty vibrations/hum, so I set about isolating it with a sorbothane gasket (which worked very well indeed. I then added a very 'DIY' laminated plywood base on big stainless steel spikes.

A while later I was bored, so I made a new subchassis from 5mm ally plate and damped it with 3 rubber bungs. As a result the new subchassis was dead as the proverbial when knocked, and this seemed to improve the lowly RD80 quite significantly. At this time it was fitted with a modified RB250 (rewired and fitted with a nice new end stub and counterweight).

This all sat on an awful DIY shelf:




All was well until I moved out, and had the TT on top of my Hifi rack. This was fine in my first rented house as the floors were concrete. When we bought our new pad with suspended floors, the TT sat atop the rack giving a lacklustre interpretation of the music at best. It wasn't level, was severely susceptible to footfall, and became more of a place for the cats to sit than something to play DSOTM on late at night.

I had to resign myself to the fact that I had 'better' things to do, bought a new amp which was too large for my Hifi rack shelves (it lives on the top where the RD80 used to), and left the sad looking TT in the corner of the spare room where it was mainly used as a washing basket support (at which it did a sterling job I may add).

Then I managed to find a Kuzma Stogi on eBay, buying it completely on a whim. This kick-started me into action, designing a new TT based on the RD80, but with a few major improvements. I also had to find a shelf going cheap or build one that wasn't too ugly (I went for the latter).

I have no interesting pictures of bits being machined etc, but the end results instead, and hopefully they speak for themselves:

This shows the upturned plinth/top plate. The plinth is made from 2 pieces of laminated 18mm MDF, with machined rebates for the top plate and rabbeted joints on the sides/front/rear. The top plate is made from 5mm sheet aluminium. I did originally plan to make the top plate from a 2mm ally/silicone sheet/2mm ally lamination, but didn't have any 2mm thick ally to hand, so settled for a single 5mm plate instead. It is held to the plinth using 14 off M4 countersunk socket screws:



Here is the subchassis (as made for the RD80 when previously modded), atop the plinth base (18mm MDF)/motor pod assy:



Here is the motor pod close up. I turned/milled it from 3" aluminium alloy, and has a cork gasket between it and the plinth base. The standard PSU is currently in service, but there are plans for something else in the future (DIY Geddon most likely):



Here is the finished item. I'm dead chuffed with how it all came together, and that it actually works okay. Actually, scratch that - very well indeed:





In the previous two photographs, you can see the shelf is mounted rather differently to most. It's suspended from the wall with 8mm shield anchor eyebolts and some cables I made up from 2mm steel dinghy mooring cable (breaking stain of 260kg!). I pre-tested a mocked up cable to 36kg, and it was fine although the solder hadn't run around the join properly (note that in order to solder steels, a special and somewhat evil acid based flux is required). The shelf is levelled using 8mm eyebolts at the front of the base section, and has further adjustment on the shelf 'plinth' section using some M6 spikes I turned up:







The last shot there shows how the shelf is attatched to the wall. There are two slightly flimsy brackets mounted on a pice of 2x4 in such a way as to allow the shelf to be raised and lowered at the front to allow levelling. It's very stable, and has passed the cat test (both of our cats being simultaneously plonked on from a height of 2 feet). The shelf and plinth section are made from 18mm MDF.

Well, it sounds lovely. Much nicer than my CD3.5, far more listenable and looks pretty good even if I do say so myself.

/Gets beer, pats back.

The end.

P.S. If anybody is interested, the TT plinth is painted with VW Pastel white.

 

Nice one - very nice in fact (as I said on PF )

Here's mine:



Everyone should build their own turntable.

 

Ooh, that's very nice YNMOAN. What is it based on, or did you make it from scratch?

The arm - is it a Hadcock?

 

Thank's very much

The arm is a Naim ARO (it is a unipivot though). The platter is from a Linn LP12 - made the rest - Carbon fibre arm board and chassis, magnetic bearing, oil damped suspension, integrated stand and some other stuff ;-)

I read that you are thinking of making an Armageddon clone to power yours - I use one (an Armageddon that is) to run mine.

The first deck I ever owned was a Thorens TD160 and I cut that up and rebuilt it - never looked back and never bought another turntable

 

Your deck sounds like quite a feat!

I had a TD160 as my first proper deck too. I didn't do quite so much to it as the RD80 though (infact I didn't know what I was doing, got scared and sold it on)!

I'm thinking of making a new bearing for my RD80, and hoped to use PTFE bushes. The problem is that I can't find them anywhere.

 

Looks like you've done a superb job. It brings back memories - I had an RD80 once, and in standard trim it was a pretty poor turntable, I'm afraid.

Ian