Well Tempered Labs Record Player, thoughts on a used one?

I owned a WTRP for a while, standard platter, black armtube, round motor. The arm is very versatile, as you can vary the depth of the silicone to accommodate different cartridges. I even put an armwrap on it and used it with a Denon DL103. I also put an extra half twist in the suspension lines to cut down on the anti-skating, which great improved the sound for high compliance cartridges.

My biggest issue with the WTRP was finding suitable belts. The cheap ones were too stretchy, and that caused both some speed variation and the occasional platter wobble that some talk about. The really good belts from George at Stanalog had no stretch and worked great, but they were $50 a pop and I believe George is out of business. Not sure if there's a current source for the good belts.

Bottom line is that the WTRP is awesome when it's hitting on all cylinders, but there are a lot of variables that have to be right. Definitely a rite of passage for all who desire to be educated in The Way of the Turntable.   :-)
If you get it and it doesn't come with manuals, I have them in PDF format and would be happy to email them to you.

I believe you can get belts from Origin live. The square motor helped if belt stretched, you could just slide motor out a little to tighten belt. Round motor is contained so no sliding motor. If I can find his number I know a guy with a reference for $1500.

Uberwaltz ...

I highly recommend a custom belt from Origin Live for the WTT.

Don’t worry about the arm. Once set up correctly, the WT is one of the best TTs out there, even those costing many times the money. There are a ton of mods that really improve things too.

On my Well-Tempered ... It is the original classic with the square motor. I’ve had it since it was new -- early 1990s.

Here’s a list of my mods:

1. Custom heavy brass clamp to dampen the silicone well.
2. Arm rewired with Cardas copper wire.
3. Cardas junction box for the female RCA jacks.
4. Custom machined brass counterweight on the arm.
5. One layer of shrink-wrap on the arm.
6. VPI record clamp.
7. Origin Live custom belt.
8. Perfect Path Technologies Alpha E-Cards along each side of the motor (four on each side).

The table sounded great when it was stock. Over the years, with all of the mods in place, it sounds pretty amazing.

Here are some owner reviews:

http://www.audioreview.com/product/analog-sources/turntables/well-tempered-labs/classic.html

Here’s a video that shows the heavy brass clamp around the tonearm well:

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=chr-yo_gc&p=well+tempered+classic+turn+table+review#id=2&vid=e1b40c9f5fa0e4ec5fcb7276edbc4cdc&action=view

Here’s Robert Harley’s review on WT mods. Scroll down for the clamp mod:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/well-tempered-arm-more-rh

Frank

I’m sure it’s great if properly adjusted. I had the original square motor model and, because I don’t like to spend time on adjustments (and really didn’t know how to adjust it properly), I’m sure it was not performing correctly. Finally got a Rega Planar 6. Probably not as good as a perfectly adjusted  WTT but I’m happy to spend my time listening rather than trying to adjust everything.  

^^^ On the "adjustments:"  Once the WT is set up, you can just leave it alone. I haven't adjusted anything over the last five years except for replacing a cartridge and adjusting VTA  and downforce for each of the cartridges, and I play a lot of records. 

Frank