Vintage Denon Direct Drive Turntable

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!

Treehugga, I've done the same thing in my Denon slate plinth, which is not quite so massive as yours (50mm thick vs 100mm). I use a Triplanar, so all that's required is to locate and drill the three bolt holes for its base. It's easy to drill slate with a masonry bit as long as the hole is relatively small in diameter. I have identified several very fine tonearms that can be surface-mounted, like the TP. These include the RS-A1 (which needs no drilling at all), the Terminator 2, and the Dynavector 505. I'm sure there are more that I don't know about. I reckon my plinth weighs 60-70 lbs AFTER cutting out the hole for the Denon, so yours is a true monster in terms of mass. Stay tuned.

Lewm
How did you get on with the tricky holes on the edge of the motor unit cut-out? I can't find m4 bolts / machine scews longer than 60mm, so unless I bore slightly larger holes from underneath to a dept of 50mm in rder fasten a nut on each bolt, i'm stuck. That's why I'm going for threaded inserts. Thanks for the heads-up re: surface mount arms, I had no idea such arms existed. Isn't the Terminator a linear tracker arm? there is a guy over here using one of them with an SP10 on a slate plinth, it looks totally brutal.