Vintage Denon Direct Drive Turntable

It turned out that in my stack of un-plinthed TTs, I had a DP-80 that I had picked up a while ago. This morning, on a whim, I put it in a solid wood DIY plinth that someone had built a number of years ago with a couple of SAEC armboards, and sold on the net for $50, and I installed my SAEC 407/23. Using the old "eyeball-it-and-guess" set-up technique, I got a wonderful TT in about 10mins. It has great stability, and I was reminded yet again how good the SAEC arm is. Upon returning home this afternoon, I spent a bit more time on set-up, and it turns out I was really lucky the first time. After several records, I continue to be surprised at how good it is. I think I need to look into a better plinth, but I am going to keep this TT in rotation for a little while.

T_bone, Raul used a minimalist plinth like that with both an SP10 and a DP80 and liked the results. It would be interesting to use your first effort as a reference, if and when you try to build a heavier/denser plinth for the DP80. I think the DP80 and other top line Denons are under-appreciated in the recent upsurge of interest in DD tables of yore.

Just a quick update.
I've handed over my template to a fella who runs a mill and specialises in slate. I'm going for a monster one-piece 100mm thick 'headstone finish' type slab. The cut-out is tricky (especially at the front where it comes with a couple of inches of the edge, and it will have to be cut with a water-jet, but I'm hoping he'll come through. At the moment I've decided to go for threaded inserts glued into bore holes for the anchoring points.

Treehugga, what are you going to do for tonearm? Get one hole drilled for the tonearm of your choice? Put in a slate insert so you can put multiple slate tonearm boards in?

Hi T_bone
I spent some time scratching my chin on this one. I was toying with the idea of having a corner piece cut out of the plinth, rounded off and bore it for the arm, whereby it would 'sit' inside the concave rounded corner without actually touching the plinth, much like the Michell Tenodec, this would allow the arm to be moved idependently of the plinth to accomodate different arms. But it would be very costly, so in the end I have decided to commit to one arm (10.5" S-shape Jelco) and have a hole drilled out in the one-pice plinth, so no going back now!