Excuse me for being late to chime in on this thread, but I have traveled down the Garrard 301 path and thought you might enjoy my experience.
I acquired a grease bearing Hammer-tone version straight from England; Loricraft fully serviced the unit and it was ready to play. I felt truly fortunate to find such a vintage unit that it had been properly restored by the "experts."
The next step was to have a base built utilizing baltic birch layers, which was a design popularly supported by a number of Garrard threads. It turned out to be around 30 lb. and this motivated me to purchase 2 tone arms for it, a Schroder DPS and an SME 3012 II. I also found a NOS Ortofon SPU GT/E.
I could hardly wait to assemble the pieces and experience the bliss of a legendary idler wheel turntable and the classic 12" SME tone arm. The Schroder showed up on Audiogon and I thought it would show me how this classic sounds with a highly respected modern tone arm.
After months of planning the weekend finally arrived and with the help of a friend we spent 2 days assembling and tuning the system.
First: The 301/SME/Ortofon-performance was polite, soft but non resolving and to say the least-dissapointing. It was musical, but at the expense of giving up resolution, speed, leading edge attack and bass to a modern system. I was shocked! What went wrong?
Second: 301/DPS/Allaerts Finnish-sounded modern, sweet strings nice mid range, but limited dynamics and little if any drive, something you wouldn't expect from an idler wheel turntable. Better that the first setup but not even close to my main rig, which at that time was a Walker/Koetsu Jade.
I am thinking, I over estimated my knowledge and don't know what I am doing, or this whole process is being over hyped. How could things have gone so terribly wrong?
After trying different tone arm cables and stands, the performance improved somewhat, but still way below my expectation and certainly not enough to justify all this expensive equipment.
I proceeded to sell off the cartridges and tone arms and stored the Garrard in it's shipping box for 6 months with plans to sell it as well.
Coincidently, a fellow audiophile, Albert Porter, was building his "Manhattan Project," a top secret base for his Technics SP10 Mk II. At the time, 2 years ago, no one was sure how this would sound, and with my experience I didn't expect much. Albert engaged a master craftsman and the base was simply amazing, marching the Technics up to the front of the class. It weighted in at around 100 lbs! with staggering performance. Albert now builds these bases for the audiophile community.
I asked them to build a base for the Garrard, but this one incorporated panzerholst wood an industrial wood from Germany and other layers with different materials. I would estimate around 75 lbs!
Around the same time I talked to Steve Dobbins, also mentioned in this thread, and he shared with me some of his experiences in building a 301 system. Steve was kind enough to recommend the Loricraft Power supply and a ceramic bearing noted in this link. He also shared with me his love for the Triplanar which he personally tweeks and Dynavector with the Garrard. Steve also builds a state of the art base for the Garrard and Technics.
Once again the moment of truth, putting it all together, but this time I felt equipped with the knowledge of Porter and Dobbins, sounds like a Law firm, to take me through the process, the results would be different.
They were different as this time everything fell into it's proper place. Incredible dynamics, leading edge speed and transparency, bass and bloom in the mid range, etc.
And to think, I was within a wisker of selling the Garrard.
But the moral of the story, there is no substitute for experience and professionalism and people who know how to do it right!
