Seeking Cartridge Recommendations

[Ray P]

Yesterday I collected the Thorens TD 150 Mk2 turntable I bought on ebay as an upgrade to my nieces new vinyl system. The turntable seems to have been well cared for as it is in very good condition cosmetically, especially when you consider it is more than 50yrs old. I'll give it a service a bit later. The turntable is complete except that it is missing the anti-skate weight and also needs a cartridge. I can bodge some sort of weight arrangement, probably by buying a generic one on ebay and reducing the weight to what is needed. The turntable has the original TP13a tonearm (the one with the ball shaped counterweight) and it seems to in good order and to be considered a reasonable performer, so I'll stick with it, at least for now.

I am completely out of date with turntables so I'm going to need a bit of help with getting the Thorens operational, starting with a recommendation for a new cartridge. On-line info says the TP13a likes low compliance cartridges so will welcome some reasonably priced moving magnet suggestions.

Later on I'll need a bit of advice on getting the thing set up and I assume I'll need to buy some sort of alignment protractor, so again, any good value suggestions?

Cheers

[vinylspinner]

Hi Ray,

You can download a decent protractor for the Thorens from the Vinylengine website, just print to scale. The AT95e would be a decent starter cartridge or an older Ortofon FF15e, VMS20e would suit. I have a Goldring G800e that I can send you foc if you want to try that, they were used on a lot of the Lenco variants.

[Ali Tait]

Ortofon OM30 maybe?

This worked well for me and was spot on when I later checked with a Dr Feickert-

[Morgan Jones]

Ortofon VMS20E and OM30 are both quite high compliance cartridges and (having stripped one down) the arm on a TD150 is pretty crude, and the bearings will be high friction, compounded by using screened lead for the arm wiring. I'd suggest something lower compliance that's capable of overcoming all that friction. But whilst the arm isn't brilliant, the turntable is good, so you could always fit a better arm.

[Ali Tait]

Ortofon OM30 maybe?

This worked well for me and was spot on when I later checked with a Dr Feickert-

Can't get the link to copy, here's a screenshot-

[Ray P]

Ortofon VMS20E and OM30 are both quite high compliance cartridges and (having stripped one down) the arm on a TD150 is pretty crude, and the bearings will be high friction, compounded by using screened lead for the arm wiring. I'd suggest something lower compliance that's capable of overcoming all that friction. But whilst the arm isn't brilliant, the turntable is good, so you could always fit a better arm.

Well, as it turns out, when I rolled up my sleeves to start servicing the turntable I Was disappointed to find that the bearings in the arm actually had a lot of play in them, previously not obvious when the arm was in its rest. I decided it wasn't worth messing it with further and have removed the Thorens tonearm and will start looking for a decent used one for, hopefully, not to many shekels. In view of that I will put the procurement of the cartridge on hold.

[Ray P]

Thanks to Nigel and Ali too, very useful.

Nigel, it seems there are some decent after market stylus options for the Goldring, so yes please to the offer, it looks as though it could be a useful option - I'll PM you.

Ray

[Morgan Jones]

Sadly, I'm not in the least surprised to hear that. There's a reason that the SME3019 dominated the market for decades from the moment it was introduced; it showed up all other arms for the shoddy products that they were. There were a few other arms with decent bearings, but they were mostly too high mass or too high friction to be used with a Shure V15, usually both. I note that you have a stable of bikes, probably ranging over the years, and you will certainly have progressed from hubs with terrible bearings as a kid to hubs with Campagnolo Record engraved on them. Think how carefully those bearings have to be adjusted, then think about the similar design in arms and consider just how beautifully machined the cones would need to be for something a fraction of the size. Now take a look at the cones on the Thorens. Horrible, aren't they? And even if they were appropriately beautiful, just how robust would they need to be to withstand a hooligan handling the arm? Second-hand gimballed arms are a lottery and the odds are against you for undamaged bearings.

I bought my Hobbymat lathe because I lusted after an SME V but couldn't justify the cost (I also didn't actually have £1200). The Hobbymat plus various accessories totalled about £1000 over two years when an SME V was £1200, so I saved £200. But (more importantly) I had a lathe left over. It's been used for making bicycle parts, repairing the tumble dryer, and all sorts.

Taking the two arguments together, a second-hand arm will have bearings in unknown condition and a small lathe is very useful for other stuff as well as making unipivot arms...

[Ray P]

Thanks Morgan, I hear what you're saying about the lathe and I have thought about getting one on a few occasions - a model steam engine has piqued my interest a few times! Apart from the outlay, one of my primary issue is where I would put one as my garage is already occupied with my static bike trainer and bike store/workshop and I'm not sure having a lathe operating in close proximity to them would be a good idea? Then there's the issue of knowing what to do with it as I would be learning from scratch on how to use it.

BTW, the bearing's in my bikes are normally sealed cartridge types nowadays and I don't remember the last time I had to populate/adjust a bearing, almost certainly when I was a teenager back in the 70s.

Are there any issues with a unipivot on a spring sub-chassis turntable?

[shane]

Are there any issues with a unipivot on a spring sub-chassis turntable?

We never had any problems with unipivots on the TT2, which is very similar in principal to the TD150. Indeed, I used a Mayware Formula 4 on mine for many years with great success. The only practical difficulty, which applies to any arm, is that a gentle hand is required to operate the lift/lower device. If you can retain the remotely operated l/l on the TD150 then so much the better.

[Morgan Jones]

Lathes aren't messy unless you machine MDF or cast iron. My two bicycles (one with cup and cone Record hubs) and motorcycle are within two feet of the lathe. Once upon a time, technical colleges used to run evening classes in metalbashing, so these were good for learning. I take it you never used a lathe at school? I find using a lathe to be very therapeutic.

My personal opinion is that unipivots and suspended subchassis turntables don't really go well together, but I'm aware that I'm in a minority on that one. And Shane's comments are very apposite. The one thing that can be said for definite is that a home-made unipivot will easily outperform a second-hand gimballed arm. I made my first arm at school in a double period, wired it and played music that evening. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. Take a look at the Altmann arm to see how crude you can get and it still work!

If you do decide to get a lathe, the model engineers will tell you to get a Myford, but they are now ridiculously over-priced. By the sound of things, you don't have room for a floor-standing lathe like a Colchester Bantam (actually only a little larger than a Myford). There are a few people who use Unimats which are so small you could take one as hand luggage on a plane. A mini-lathe is your best bet. Be warned that you will spend as much again on accessories for any machine tool. But making precision swarf is very satisfying.

[Ant]

Are there any issues with a unipivot on a spring sub-chassis turntable?

Ive used a sonus f4 and mayware f4 on a td150 in the past and i use my own unipivot on my oracle. Works fine, no different considerations to any other sort of arm really.

Re a lathe, a hobbymat md65 in reaonable nick is easy enough to come by for around 300 quid and will do anyone from an absolute novice to someone like morgan or misty who know what they are doing and has been using them for years
When i got mine id never used one before, id used my woodturning lathe, but thats a pretty different proposition.
That lathe is really forgiving and capable of much more precise work than it looks like it should be.

Its also very compact and neat. Machining ally or steel or acetal, nylon ect, you get birds nests of spirals not chips, which are easy to get rid of. cast iron is loads of tiny chips (but its so nice to work with), brass gives you fine sandlike chips, but just tends to pile up rather than flying all over the place, and mdf just results in awful dust that gets into eveything. But common metals and engineering plastics are much 'tidier' to work with.
Its all about feel with it, it'll tell you through the handwheels wether its happy doing what you are asking it to do. And its very talkative for a small ostensibly 'budget' machine.
Very well supported in terms of spares and service items too
Dont faff with stainless though it doesnt like it ime

[Ray P]

Thanks chaps, something to think about regarding buying a lathe - perhaps something to keep me busy when I retire in the next year or so. I think if I were to be ruthless and get rid of some of the stuff I've hoarded in the garage I can make space for a small bench.

For now though, I need to focus on getting the TD150 sorted out as an upgrade to the Dual turntable for my niece, so I'll look to buy a used tonearm to replace the original.

I have a spare chassis/platter from another TD150 that I thought I would build into another turntable later so that would be a good candidate fr a DIY unipivot I think.

[MistyBlue]

Re lathe:

All of the above really.

I just had a look at Warco (where we got our first new Chinese lathe from years ago) and was shocked how much the prices have increased. However, there are plenty of decent used lathes for sale that would be fine. The smaller, domestically acceptable lathes usually command proportionately (for their size) higher prices unfortunately. As Morgan says, when considering monetary outlay, you will need tooling as well.

Happy to help if I can – seeing that I am just down the road from you and have got my lathe and tooling set up for the things we do, you would be very welcome to drop by and have a look round the “bitch barn”.

[Morgan Jones]

If you should decide to buy a second-hand lathe, it's useful to have someone who knows more go along with you. They will be able to ask the seller meaningful questions like, "Where are the change wheels/face plate/4-jaw chuck/tail stock chuck that belong with this lathe?" And come out with useful haggling points like, "There's rather a lot of backlash in the cross slide, isn't there?" and "It's very lightly tooled for the price you're asking." If you can pick up a Hobbymat MD65 in decent condition for £300, then that's an absolute bargain. If you find a Hobbymat for sale, drop me a PM and I might be able to join you on trip to inspect/purchase. And as Ant says, the Hobbymat gives lots of feedback. It's a very nice little lathe to use.

Before I forget, the Model Engineering Exhibition is on at the Leamington Cowshed in a few weeks' time. It's a good place for buying cutting tools and the like for lathes and mills.