Who's familiar with Audiocraft/Ultracraft AC300?

Hi Raul, yes these pieces are probably 20+ years old so not much info available on the web, I was hoping that experienced vetrans like you could tell me about them. Jean Nantais, who's delivering my new Lenco tomorrow thinks that his Decca Super Gold is a good match and is bringing it along for a demo. Should be interesting.

I downloaded the manual at vinyl engine and it mentions that the damping oil has a useful life of 2-3 years. I'm not sure if they mean 2-3 yrs in the tonearm or in the bottle? The bottle I have is about 20 years old, I wonder if its any good still? If not, do you know wheere I can get some? its AO-20 High purity silicone oil.

Nice arm, I owned one.

Get a Sumiko headshell from the Needle Doctor. While you don't need the azimuth feature this headshell has (you can accomplish this with your arm with the outrigger weights), the Sumiko headshell is machined from a solid billet of aluminum - a nice product which this arm is deserving of.

Congratulations!

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

Thom: I installed it last night and noticed that it was tilting to one side. I just read your post and noticed you mentioned the "outrigger weights". Aha! are these the little weights that screw onto the side of the tonearm to balance it? I noticed a few weights in the box, but wasn't sure what they were for. If this is correct, I'll have to try this when I get home tonight to right the ship.
Thanks

Thom, you're right, the outrigger weight solved the problem like a charm. So if I understand correctly, this arm allows you to adjust the damping which allows you to use a wide range of cartridges from low to high compliance, is that correct?

Yes. adding damping can (speaking in broad terms) help you out when using a slightly less compliant cartridge than would otherwise be ideal.

When I had the AC-300, my main cartridge was a Benz M0.9 - one of three cartridges in the wood bodied line that was the first step up from the Glider.

The three cartridges in this "model" represented three output levels - the L0.2, M0.9, and H2.0, with the model names reflecting the cartridge's output in millivolts.

If I could, I'd stick with the broad range of cartridges (including Benz) that had a compliance in the 12-15 range.

I used minimal to no damping with the Benz, BTW.

There are likely other fine headshells out there, but the Sumiko is certainly one of the better ones which doesn't cost huge $$$ (as in the Ikeda headshell amongst others). I like the fact that it's machined from a solid billet of aluminum.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier