Turntables

Somewhere between cueing the tonearm and hearing the first note hang in the room, you realise the Garrard 301 isn’t just a vintage deck, it’s a statement. A transcription-level machine from the 1950s, designed to meet the broadcast standards of its day, and still somehow fully competitive with today’s flagship offerings.

My main table is a Loricraft-rebuilt 301, serial number 66787, placing it in July 1963, right near the end of the production run. It sits in a Lignolab plinth designed and built by the late Norbert Gütte, finished in palisander rosewood, dense and resonant, yet somehow inert. There’s more engineering buried in that plinth than the clean exterior lets on, a shame they’re no longer made.

The arm is an Auditorium23 version of the EMT 997, mounted on a bronze Auditorium23 board. The ever eloquent Art Dudley once reviewed this tonearm, and I have to agree with everything he wrote at the time. Cartridge rotation includes the EMT JSD6, TSD Anniversary, TMD25i, TND65i, and an Ortofon SPU-AE or #1S, each one with its own voice, but all delivered with the 301’s signature drive and clarity. The whole setup rests on a set of Isoacoustics Orea Graphite isolation feet.

I use several different step up transformers and cartridges.

Recently I have started using a DS Audio DS-E3 cartridge and equaliser. These are amazing devices.

I’ve made a few updates over time, an oversized Shindo bearing, large-diameter platter, and Shindo’s lead-infused mat with the distinctive center weight. Swapping in the Audio Silente idler wheel and a Classic Turntable Company eddy disc helped lower the already excellent noise floor. Most recently, I installed an Audio Grail Bastion Plate to stiffen the top chassis. It’s subtle, but there’s definitely more stability to the imaging, especially in complex passages.

Is it quiet? Absolutely. As quiet as any belt drive I’ve owned, and better than all of them. The idea that idler drives must be noisy is just another leftover cliché from people who haven’t heard a properly set-up Garrard. The 301 doesn’t just silence that argument, it buries it under a mountain of musical authority.

The Garrard doesn’t sound “vintage.” It just sounds excellent. Fast, grounded, and confident. There’s a real sense of scale and intent behind every note, like the music is being physically pushed forward rather than gently teased out. There’s only a few other turntables that would tempt me away, but they’re all way beyond my means (at least for now). I shall be content with what I have. It appeals to the retro-futurist in me anyway.

I’ve owned a lot of turntables. Belt-drives, direct-drives, all the usual audiophile suspects. This 301 setup is the best of them. It doesn’t flatter the music, it delivers it as it is, with clarity and conviction. That’s the magic of the 301, it’s not that it survives in a modern context, but that it transcends it. No nostalgia is required for enjoyment.

My secondary turntable set up is currently a Technics SL-1500c direct drive turntable. It sounds great. I’ve connected it to the second input on the Kondo phono stage. I replaced the mat with a rubber and cork one from Pro-Ject. Seems to be good. Damps the platter well anyway and looks pretty cool.