Second Hand Shop Find - Goldring GR1.2 (Rega P2) - Lets modify this...

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Popped to Cashgenerator for a nose, as they tend to have old bits of HiFi in there and sometimes you can grab a bargain.
I saw a dusty turntable there looking sorry for itself and thought i'd take a closer look.

The turntable looked a familiar design already, but underneath it was badged "Goldring GR1.2", having some knowledge on turntables I know
this is in fact a Rega P2 but badged Goldring. But instead of a Glass platter these have a MDF platter. And has a Goldring cartridge/stylus instead of the Rega one.

Looking at the sale label it seemed like it had been there for some time, must have been in storage as I've never spotted it before, after a bit of negotiation it was mine for £60.

I took it home and cleaned it up, I happen to have a Planar glass platter here so popped that on top.
The "Goldring" MDF platter is silver but not to my taste so I will paint that matte black and swap between the Glass/MDF depending on how they sound.

To fit the Planar 3 glass platter I need to adjust the VTA of the tonearm, this is easily solved so I 3D printed a spacer.
 

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Ordered a replacement belt and everything seems to be working okay with this turntable, so decided to start some mods.
Not really a fan of the glass platter, although an improvement I wanted to upgrade to something else.
So I ordered a "Delrin" platter from Ben @ Fidelity Designs LTD fidelitydesignsltd.co.uk - Home, nice chap and great service.

I opted for the 26mm White "Delrin" platter and absolutely blown away with the quality of this, you cannot see it moving when the platter is spinning.

As you can see in this picture I have Ortofon OM Series Cartridge on there, the Stylus on the Goldring Elektra is worn, so put this OM series on there to use it for
now until I decide what cartridge to order for it.
 

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Time to move on to something else:

After fitting the Delrin Platter I thought i'd treat it to some other bits and overhauled the tonearm.

The original wire in the tonearm was looking a bit sorry for itself so I decided to replace it with some copper litz wire and fit some gold plated connections, I won't start a discussion about cables on here, I do not subscribe to "Audiophile" cable stuff personally, I look at things with my engineers head on so fit what I feel is suitable for me.

I checked the tonearm bearings, I wanted to see if it was true what others had reported about the Goldring RB251 having different bearings to the Rega counterpart, in this case they were identical to what Rega fit to their RB251. The only difference was the adjustment was a bit off! I think this could have been deliberate... Who knows...

So ordered up some NMB ABEC 5 bearings, while the tonearm was off I decided to clean it up, remove any casting marks and paint it. I used Lidl "Rim Paint" for this.

The Rega method of grounding isn't great, they just connect the cartridge grounds to the tonearm and not bother running a separate ground wire, the phono/rca cables it came with were pretty poor and were loose in the phono pre-amp I have so decided to replace them. And add a separate ground wire.

I found a lead off an old turntable here which I removed, Rega in their wisdom don't allow you to easily swap the phono leads, they terminate them in a molded plastic and then just solder the tonearm wire to it.

I removed the small PCB from that molded plastic, discarded the old leads and drilled a oval hole in the middle to pass the new leads through and re-used that small PCB.

Fresh "Litz" wire that I terminated with gold connectors, a tip if anyone solders these, put a toothpick in a vice and push them on to solder
or snap a wooden cotton bud in half and cut in to a triangle with a knife.

Arm prepped and painted and ready for new wire and bearings, I twisted each channel in to a pair, no idea if it will help with interference etc (technically should do as they are crossing over out of phase with each other), but nothing to lose and makes terminating it to the phono lead pcb easier.

Arm assembled, bearings fitted with a tiny bit of "Loctite Blue" all adjusted and fitted.

Very happy with the outcome and looking forward to fitting a new Cartridge.
 

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Thanks for posting.....and so your vinyl addiction begins.
A Welsh slate plinth would be my tip for your next mod.Local monumental masons are your friend and very accommodating.

Unfortunately it started a long long time ago, early 1980s...
I just couldn't leave that turntable there and had to get it, it's replacing my Pro-Ject turntable, which I will now use to test 2nd hand vinyl on and for cleaning.

Yes that might be a nice touch, I could cut a bit of Welsh Slate for it to sit on :), I think it would be too hard to work with to make an actual plinth.
 
Great find (wish I could stumble across things like this at thrift stores) and very nice modifications.

The only little thing I might add is, it would be worth it to hit the tonearm headshell finger lift with a few spritzes of clear coat spraypaint. I've spraypainted a lot of things and anywhere you touch it frequently, the paint will eventually wear off and even become discolored. A coat of clear helps a lot to keep your paint job intact.

I once spraypainted some ugly light switches and the switch plate. I hit the light switches with quite a bit of clear coat. Even though fingers flipped the switches every day, it did not wear off. But I'd neglected to clear coat the switch plate, and the paint wore away in the areas around the switches.
 
Great work, recently picked up a Moth Alamo (another rebadged planar 2), and already started looking at mods. So far I've just replaced the bearing (and cleaned the shaft) with a ceramic one and got a silicone belt.
Sorely tempted to re-wire but not sure my skills are to the same standard as yours?!

Have you considered swapping the stub over to a metal one?! Supposed to be a decent improvement on the plastic original.
 
Great find (wish I could stumble across things like this at thrift stores) and very nice modifications.

The only little thing I might add is, it would be worth it to hit the tonearm headshell finger lift with a few spritzes of clear coat spraypaint. I've spraypainted a lot of things and anywhere you touch it frequently, the paint will eventually wear off and even become discolored. A coat of clear helps a lot to keep your paint job intact.

I once spraypainted some ugly light switches and the switch plate. I hit the light switches with quite a bit of clear coat. Even though fingers flipped the switches every day, it did not wear off. But I'd neglected to clear coat the switch plate, and the paint wore away in the areas around the switches.
Great idea, I did stock up on a few cans of this paint. I have a large Channel Master 1.2m dish outside and painted the LNB support arms with it, so will see how well it stands up.
It's strange paint, as it's designed for alloy wheels it seems to have clear coat built in?



Great work, recently picked up a Moth Alamo (another rebadged planar 2), and already started looking at mods. So far I've just replaced the bearing (and cleaned the shaft) with a ceramic one and got a silicone belt.
Sorely tempted to re-wire but not sure my skills are to the same standard as yours?!

Have you considered swapping the stub over to a metal one?! Supposed to be a decent improvement on the plastic original.

Thank you :), nice deck the Moth Alamo.

I will one day, the guy I bought my Delrin platter from does a sub platter as well out of metal and also an upgraded sub platter bearing assembly.
Where do you stop with these things.
 
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