Spin Doctor

In 1957, the grease-bearing Schedule 1 301 was replaced by the Schedule 2 version, which introduced an oil bearing with oil-retaining sintered bushings, minimizing user maintenance. There is spirited debate among 301 aficionados as to which bearing sounds better, but as often happens with vintage gear, the earlier and much rarer Schedule 1 grease-bearing models have more value to collectors.

To build a 301 Advanced, Garrard starts by removing every part from the vintage donor chassis. The aluminum is then stripped to bare metal, partly for safety reasons—the original used lead-based paint—before repainting it in ivory, the most common of the three paint finishes offered at various times on original 301s. New control plates and switches are fitted, then the 6lb platter with its stroboscopic markings—a £2 option when this 'table was new!—is rebalanced, repainted, and remachined to give it the clearest strobe markings I have seen on a 301. Cosmetically, the Advanced truly looks like a brand-new 301, just like the first Garrard-restored 301 I saw at High End Munich 2019.

Under the hood, the same level of care is observed. The original motor and main platter bearing are retained but get complete rebuilds, with new sintered bearing bushings machined (like every new part) to the original tolerances. The linkages are stripped of their cadmium plating and are instead plated with zinc because, as with the chassis paint, that cadmium plating doesn't meet modern toxicity regulations.

Rubber does not hold up well after 60 years, so all rubber components, including the critical idler wheel, are replaced. The distinctive rubber platter mat with its embossed Garrard logos is as soft and pliable as any I've seen. Amazingly, Garrard's original supplier for these parts, Southborne Rubber in Hampshire, is still in business; that company is once again making these parts after a 60-year pause.

The parts that make the new 301 "Advanced" are the new plinth and tonearm. When I reviewed the SME Model 60 in 2023, one part that made it really stand out was the Series VA tonearm with its unique resin armtube. For the Garrard 301 Advanced, SME has taken a step beyond that, by using a resin version of the longer Series V-12 12" arm, called the VA-12. As with the SME Model 60's Series VA arm, this new version cannot be purchased separately and is only available on the 301 Advanced.

If you had bought a 301 between 1957 and 1965, it would not have come with a plinth or tonearm. Back then, the new owner specified which plinth and arm they wanted, even if it meant cutting the appropriate hole in your radiogram's shelf or (if you were a professional user) a radio station's studio console. The original owner's manual included a foldout cutting template, with instructions on how to mount your new 301 in whatever slab of wood you deemed appropriate. The 301 Advanced comes with a lovingly reproduced facsimile of that original clothbound hard-cover manual, complete with the foldout cutting template and exploded diagrams of every part. But these days, Garrard doesn't expect you to pull out the jigsaw and cut a hole in a slab of wood.

The new plinth for the 301 Advanced is CNC machined from a solid block of Advanced Polymer Resin, a material SME started using with their Model 6 turntable. This material is said to have superb self-damping properties, helping to minimize motor-noise resonance from the 301 chassis. Four height-adjustable feet with built-in damping rings also help to minimize vibration and noise. The plinth material has a neutral color, but you can order your 301 Advanced in any color of your choice from the German RAL color palette (footnote 4).

Normally, this would be the point at which I would finally fire up the product and do some focused listening, but this time my best-laid plans hit a brick wall. After assembling everything and carefully installing my prized Lyra Atlas λ Lambda, I ran a few tests and discovered a problem. The braking assembly of the 301's motor had been damaged in shipping and wasn't performing optimally. I was able to play and listen to records, but after consulting the importer, I decided to hold off on critical listening until they can provide a new unit. I have been promised that this will happen quickly. I expect to include that part of the evaluation in the next installment of Spin Doctor. With regret, I must leave readers hanging for now.

The Reliable Uberlight Frame
Whenever I travel to someone's home to perform surgery on a turntable, one of the most essential parts of my toolkit is a couple of high-intensity LED flashlights that allow me to see what the heck I'm doing. Many people—too many—set up their turntables in a dark corner of their man caves, making it hard to see much of anything. Even if you're just playing records, it really helps to have bright, clear lighting near your turntable so that you can see whether the record needs cleaning, what kind of condition it's in, and how precisely your stylus is lined up before you lower it onto the record. Good lighting makes everything so much easier.

Being an old-school kind of guy, I have relied on a popular gooseneck lamp called the Littlite for decades. The Littlite is still made in a revised LED version, but mine is the old halogen bulb version. It works pretty well, but it gets very hot after it's been on for a while.

Over the last few years, I have seen a lot of people using a more modern LED gooseneck design called the UberLight Flex, made by a Canadian company called Reliable Corp. Reliable has now pulled out all the stops to make the best turntable light I have ever seen, the UberLight Frame (footnote 5).

Available in black or white, the modern and elegant Frame has a form that's essentially two adjacent sides of a 17" square, with a row of LEDs in the top section that extends over your turntable. The assembly swivels on its base. In my setup, which has two turntables side by side, I can position the Frame between them and rotate the light over whichever turntable I'm working with. Three mounts are included: a heavy base that can sit on any flat surface, a plate that screws onto your shelf, and a clamp that grips your rack. I used the clamp. It took only a few seconds to tighten it securely.

The Frame is loaded with features, going way beyond the on and off switch with a couple of brightness options you get with most LED lamps. The row of 18 LEDs can be turned on and off selectively in six groups of three, allowing you to focus the illumination over a certain area. There are six brightness levels, three color-temperature options, and the LED panel can be swiveled within the frame to direct the light forward or backward by up to 30 degrees from vertical. The maximum light output is about 600 lumens, which is fantastic when you want to assess a record's condition or cleanliness or read the pressing information stamped in the dead wax.

Coolest of all, there's a remote control, which lets you adjust the brightness and color temperature and power it on and off. The remote has its own storage cavity within the Frame, and when the remote is stored, the Frame charges its battery. Finally, the remote has a tiny built-in flashlight, which is useful for illuminating your cartridge's stylus when you need to clean it.

While it isn't exactly cheap, the price—at $399—seems pretty fair in the context of a lot of high-end audio equipment, especially considering its plethora of useful features. Saving you from one stylus-cueing or cleaning accident could pay for the UberLight Frame several times over. For me, it's a keeper. If I could convince everyone whose turntable I'm going to set up to get one of these before I arrive, I'd be able to leave my flashlights at home.

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Footnote 4: See ral-farben.de/en.

Footnote 5: Reliable Corporation, 100 Wingold Ave., Toronto, Canada. Tel: (800) 268-1649. Web: reliablecorporation.com.