Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Widge, if there are four wires at the headshell, it's a stereo hookup there. Three wires at the tonearm to the junction might be a common-grounded stereo hookup: one hot for each channel and a shared, common ground.

My in-progress Bogen still has its factory arm. It LOOKS at first glance to have three wires from the base of the arm to a tag strip where the output cables are soldered, but it's really two small diameter coaxial cables, each with a hot and a ground; and a single ground wire. That makes a total of FIVE wires soldered to separate tags.

If yours is a three-wire stereo hookup, that's exactly the same wiring system as is used on Decca cartridges. Even the new ones with four pins actually have the two ground pins tied together.

It should be easy enough to trace what goes where, using an ohm meter.

Hi Goughary, and welcome to "Da Thread II",

Sure glad we have another archivist in our midst. A well done coup in capturing all that! I'm sure many of us will be calling on you for copies.

As for your Bogen Lenco, Mike Greene and I both use the Sonus Formula IV unipivots on our Bogens - his is a 70 (I think) and mine is a 61 (I think). This arm is the longer tube version of the Mayware and it matches up nicely for spindle to pivot mounting distance on these early top plates. The stock mounting armhole of the Bogens will be just a couple of mms larger than the Sonus stub. This was close enough not to bother with a subplate armboard (at least, for me). Two fender washers (one plastic/one neoprene) do a fine job in securing the arm once the overhang has been set.

The VTA is a close call with these low-slung Lencos even with the Sonus adjusted to its lowest limit. The armlift mechanism will just about bottom out on the top plate depending how tall the cartridge is.

Hi Goughary,

AT1005, fits the Lenco L70 collar. Very easy fix, I even use the Lenco lift/lower.

Regards

Mario_b - thanks for your reply - I actually bought a Sonus after seeing a foto on the thread - I'll try that, but I am looking for a good arm that is not a unipivot. I see you have an Ortofon on the 75 in your system - is there any other arm like that you have tried that works on the L70?

I think that after all these years and seeing so many people try this, that at this point, everything should have already been tested - There is that great chart at the Lencoland website - but it doesn't really give much info specific to the L70 - Any others?

As for the thread - I have it all saved as word files - I'll try to see if I can zip them together and if you want to email me, I'll send you a copy. I printed a lot of it and poored through a ton of the first half, but it's hundreds and hindreds of pages, so I haven't gotten through all of it - maybe someone wants to build a new website that really takes all of the information and makes it a real easy place to get and share information...

Thanks Gp49,
It looks exactly the way you describe. I'm not so much concerned with the arm wiring as such... You've taken care of that, but the deck seems to have only 1 wire running from the junction to the preamp side. I'm curious to know, if I do have to rewire this, 1. what type of wiring I need for the job and 2. To what tags should they be soldered so that I actually can hear this beast play.
Thanks
widge