Woodsong Garrard 301, Artisan Fidelity 301, Shindo 301, SME 301, or etc.?

@bukanona
Yes the CTC rod is a good compromise - less friction and inherently more stability than a ball. Good luck with the motor switching mod, as you say it is not hard.

@jperry 

would love to hear a 301 with all of the mods made by @dover 

Thanks for the vote of confidence.
My 301 is not my main reference table, but it handily disposed of a Platine Verdier which I had as a second turntable ( for 78's and mucking around with arms/cartridges etc ). It wiped the Verdier and a Micro Seiki for timing and coherence and digs just as deep in terms of resolution.

Your 301 looks great. Audio Grail, Woodsong, & Artisan Fidelity all do beautiful work. The most important thing they do is actually the motor rebuild - it is not possible to relube the bottom bearing in the motor without dismantling it. After I rebuilt my motor with new bushes and truing everything up, not only was the noise reduced considerably, but it actually runs much cooler.

I run a Fidelity Research FR64S/B60 on it which seems very synergistic so I'm assuming your Ikeda would be great. Most of my audio visitors are shocked by my 301 ( in a good way ) when they hear it. 

@scar972 

I have also replinthed and tweaked a 401 for one of my listening buddies - starting with an Audio Grail 401 I built a custom plinth from engineered stone, did the power switch mod, and a few other tweaks - 11kg brass platter and new bearing, artisan fidelity idler wheel.

On that we've run a Helius Omega, Moersch DP8 and now a Kuzma 4Point11. The Kuzma 4Point is producing excellent results on the 401 with Kuzma CAR50 & Van Den Hul Colibri.

So thus far my 2 favourite arms for the Garrards are the FR64S & Kuzma 4Point. ( I also have Naim Aro/Dynavector 501/Eminent Technology ET2 and a few others kicking around for comparison ).

Chris Harban advised me not to switch to a much heavier platter.
That the 301 motor was not designed to move that much weight.
Although it does seem like a heavier platter would add thrust and a stronger tone. And the available heavy copper or brass platters are $1-2K. Does anyone have experience changing from a lighter to heavier platter?

A huge upgrade to my TT rig was putting it on a SRA VR platform. As always, never imagined there could be better SQ but I just changed from the entry level VR to the mid line Ohio Class.
Wow, what a difference! Why Ohio Class? Because SRA makes vibration control for nuclear submarines. Much more $ than a heavy platter but waaay worth it.

Chris Harban advised me not to switch to a much heavier platter.
That the 301 motor was not designed to move that much weight.

@mglik

Yes I agree with Chris on this. The 301 motor is not as powerful as the later 401 and in my experience the timing and coherence of the bass deteriorates with heavier platters on the 301.

On my 301 after trying heavier platters & bearings I stuck with the original platter.

The original 301 platter is slightly concave and you cant use metal or rigid mats on a concave surface. So i had the top surface of my original 301 platter very carefully precision machined flat and rebalanced. You have to be very careful and need a precision engineer, else you can lose too much meat off the platter and it becomes more resonant.

In terms of mats I have the following in my collection -
Final Audio 4.8kg copper
Micro Seiki 1.8kg copper
Goldmund methaclyate
Sumiko Compositions barium lead/methacrelate
SAEC SS300
Seisin Engineering ADS3005sp mk2.

I also have a collection of weights & clamps from Final Audio, Goldmund, Audiocraft and others.

With the original 301 platter machined flat, I prefer the SAEC & Seisin mats with no clamp or weight. both mats are not heavy and improve the sound without upsetting the balance.

You might want to talk to Chris about how to get a level surface platter - it might be better to buy an aftermarket platter from CTC to get a platter with a level surface - and then machine it down if necessary to match the original plattters weight.

@dover My 401 sits in a 6-layer ply Macassar Ebony gloss plinth. The platter is a machined finish version from Peak Hifi and I use an Audio Silente idler wheel. I’m very satisfied with the performance I’m getting and the 6 layer plinth is the perfect thickness to damp vibrations without deadening the sound. I don’t feel the need to tweak it any further at the moment which is good for me. I’m using a similar plinth for the 301.
Earlier this year, I got your opinion on the Morch DP-8 tonearm and ended up not getting the Morch after hearing your experiences. I ended up going in a whole different direction.