Help me buy a Garrard

Thanks Noromance for the info. But the guy will not ship. I live on Singapore so there is no way I can collect it from him directly :-(

Ilikmangos, thanks for an insightful post.
When you say you like the grey hammertone ones the most, is it for its special sonics or just the paint quality ?

Hi Pani,

That is a bit of a tricky question, as my answer is going to reflect the bias of my experience with these decks. They are not all the same, and in my experience, even decks from the more well known restorers are not all equal either, as much as we would like to think that they should be...

One of the quietest running 301s that I have come across happens to be a mint condition Hammertone. It's motor was very quiet, as was its idler assembly, and bearing. It was also the best looking, by far.

One of the worst condition 301s I have ever seen was also a Hammertone. I received it for a full service from Malaysia. It was missing most of it's paint, and there was corrosion under some of what was remaining of the paint. The motor coils were a bit noisy, I was highly skeptical of this deck. The owner wanted to keep it as original as possible, for sentimental reasons. The bearing was good, showing little wear. By the time I had fully cleaned it up, rebuilt it, and tuned it for quiet running, mainly the motor needing work, as the coils were noisy, my appreciation for this deck had grown a lot. I was able to quiet the motor considerably. For it's obviously, very heavily worn condition, it was still very beautiful, and still played music pretty well.

I think the Hammertones look better.

Sonic wise, In my opinion, the biggest issue between 301 motor units, is how quietly they run. Aesthetics can all be changed, linkages re-plated, the commonly replaced parts all replaced, all that, but how quietly the individual deck can be made to run is what will be the limiting factor in the true performance of the deck, that is my opinion. During playback, the noise level of most any well sorted 301 is sufficiently low as to be mostly a non-issue. If you turn the gain way up and place the stylus in the dead wax, a place in the vinyl groove where there is no, or little content, and then you can hear the mechanics of the 301, or by using a stethoscope. Really, this borders on listening to the gear, and not the music, but I suffer from being a little bit of a gear head, and I like my decks to be as absolutely quiet as possible. In my experience, the idler drive is the biggest source of noise in a 301. It is well worth making sure that it is running quiet.
Yes, belt drive decks can be quieter. But some of the idler drive decks have a little something magic in the way that they can help pull sound from a record groove. That is why people love them.

If you get a deck from Loricraft, or Audio Grail, you cannot go wrong. As to if either one is better, or even a deck from another reputable refurbisher, that will be dependent on which deck is actually best, and quietest. There are subtle differences among many of them, most all.

Do you like listening to mono? or 78rpm? if so, get a grease bearing, Hammertone if possible.

One difference that I have seen among different restorers, is which parts are replaced. I have seen some decks come in, restored, with original springs, and the spring damper rubbers loose on the spring. Those dampers are there for a reason, and they are important. Not sure why anyone would not replace them. With AG, or Loricraft, you are good.

My reference deck is a high spec Linn LP12. It used to be top spec, Radikal, Naim Aro, Dynavector XV-1s, Keel, Cirkus, etc.. In side by side tests, some well equipped Garrards have fared very well. The Linn is always a quieter deck, that is not a question. Sound wise, I never did really make a solid decision, as I did not want to swap my cartridge and such around for I love both decks. That LP12 was pushing $20k, the Garrard, a little more than half that. It was not really a fair test.

I love the Garrards. I like 301s better than 401s. 401s might tend to be a little quieter. (In a 401, I recommend going for the flush strobe model, as there are differences in the motor, and in most of the raised strobe models, there are switch contacts that tend to break in time due to the design. These contacts are very difficult to fix, it can be done, and a replacement switch to match is nearly impossible to find)

For the most part, I like the Hammertones best because of how they look.

Every 301 has it's own 'character', aesthetics, and maybe to a lesser degree, how quietly they run.

On these decks, which are mostly around 50 years old, the motor coils have a range in how quiet they are, and most are plenty quiet. Some are a little noisier, but I have only seen a few that were really noisy. Also, there are subtle differences in how quiet individual idler wheels can be, depending on how they are worn. The idler drive assembly almost always needs to be re-bushed. This is not always as straight forward as it might seem, perhaps due to differences in precision of the idler carrier? Sometimes I have to 'adjust' the bushings after pressing new ones in, to achieve the correct operation of the idler wheel.

The quietest, best running, 301 that I have heard was a mint condition Hammertone. It came up to speed immediately, and just worked great.

The worst condition 301 that I have seen was also a Hammertone. It was missing almost all of it's paint, and the motor was a little on the noisy side, but by the time I was finished with it, I really appreciated it, the way it had aged so gracefully. A cream color 301 in the same condition would have been really ugly. Too ugly.

Get a good one, and have it fully gone through to bring it into quiet running. If you want to buy one on ebay, work with someone experienced in 301s, who can help you find a good one. It is pretty easy to spot most of the lemons. In general, most of the decks that I have received that look like they are in great shape, they are in great shape. Still, it is alway a little bit of 'fingers crossed'.

That supposedly NOS unit referred to above, that one looks pretty tatty for NOS. At best, I would call it 'unused'. It would need to be gone through also.

Oops.. double post. I wasn't sure that first one actually went through..