Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?

Dear Henry,
Here's a story about my TT101 that fits this thread. As you and some others may recall, I bought mine very cheaply in "broken" condition. Bill Thalmann re-capped it and Bill and I re-soldered many of the joints. All of that work did improve things, but it still has/had an intermittent problem that was rather maddening: It starts up fine but after 1-2 minutes, it "dies"; the power seems to cut off and the platter will coast to a stop, even though the "Power" light stays on. For this reason, I sort of gave up on it temporarily. I had a plan to build a jig for it, so that I can flip it over on either side, top or bottom, to work on the wiring harness, because my last hope is that the issue has to do with a cracked wire or a cracked solder joint somewhere inside one of the multi-prong connectors that traverse the various layers of the chassis. Today we're having a snow storm, so I spent some time building the jig. Then I removed the metal cannister/shield from the TT101 chassis and mounted the now naked chassis in my jig. For the heck of it, I re-installed the platter to see if I could reproduce the problem. Guess what. The TT101 runs reliably at perfect speed consistently, in naked form mounted in my jig. I think you had a similar finding way back when you were having an issue with your TT101. Do you still use yours in the "nude"? I am going to do that. I think the metal can is putting pressure on one or another of the harnesses and bringing out an underlying issue with solder joints or old wires that is moot when the TT101 is in the nude. I'll send you an email with a photo of my jig, which is just a piece of plywood cut out for the TT101, held up in space by three threaded rods.

So, this also makes me want to build a minimalist plinth to mount the nude TT101, something like yours but with an attached platform for mounting a tonearm, rather than an outboard arm pod.

Hi Lew,
I sincerely hope you've solved the problem permanently...👀❓
I seem to remember some 'false' hopes previously....❓

Whilst you are making up your attached platform....it is easy enough to mount a tonearm on something like...oh, I dunno....a can of asparagus so that you can get the table running and see what you think....😎❓

You are perhaps referring to my innovative tt "feet", made of small cans of Mandarin Orange slices in water. I think Del Monte brand sounds best (joke here), but you may have different brands in Oz. I still use them under my Denon DP80 and Lenco L75, both of which are mounted in slate slabs. Actually, I do one thing further: the bottom of each can (3 per tt) sits on a tiptoe so as to isolate the sides and rim of the can from the shelf. I think you guys or the Brits say, "Works a treat". In this case, if you're unhappy with the feet, they are STILL a treat: you can open the cans and eat the contents. Oddly enough, when you remove the paper labels, the cans look quite avant garde and art deco. One visitor to my home thought they must be very expensive boutique footers. (Cost = ~$2 per can.)

Have you seen the Denons remounted in elaborate wood plinths, by PBN Audio? They've done a beautiful job, and I have no doubt that the Denons are much improved by getting rid of their cannister shield, just as are the Victors. But PBN go much farther to improve performance, other than merely removing the cannister, albeit at a very steep price. I've got to remove the cannister from my DP80, as well, even though it runs "like a top". I think the cannisters are a sonic negative, regardless of how they may or may not affect function.

Henry, You're correct. There was one point in the past where I did think I had the problem solved, or more fairly, I did think that after all the re-soldering and fussing either I had accidentally re-soldered the exact right bad connection so as to actually fix the problem without knowing it, or the beast had cured itself in some mysterious way. At that point, the TT101 in its QL10 plinth was sitting on our kitchen counter. However, when I then moved it to its point of use in my basement, it turned out still to be possessed of evil spirits. If you recall, we also speculated on the vagaries of my household AC lines or the role of RFI, as causative agents. At one point, you removed the canister/shield from your unit, and I thought you reported that it ran more reliably in the nude. Isn't that when you discovered the wonders of the TT81? We talked at that point about the fact that the canister itself acts as a shield for RF generated inside the TT101, etc. Anyway, nude is advantageous for sonics as well as for reliability (no failures now in 4 days running off my basement AC), and I'm leaving it nude.

Today its freezing and raining and gray outside. I took the opportunity to re-mount the now nude TT101 back into its heavily re-enforced plinth. Lo and behold, it still works. I am keeping my fingers crossed.