Technics SL-1200 mods

A couple drops of whale oil makes the platter spin and spin and spin.

brass pipe cap vs aux weight from KAB

Brass cap + counterweight in place

The weight of the 103 was so heavy with the sumiko headhshell and ebony that I needed to add the brass to the counterweight. I added Teflon to the armtube but the 103 wanted to dance like a Grado so I had to add the electrical tape.
At first the 103 was a bit dull but with the tape it opened up nicely, became dynamic. Weird how just a bit of weight and tape does that. Then I switched to a SCOTTRT suggestion: heatshrink. 5/8 to 3/4 inch size, which will slip easily over the headshell collar. This added a better sense of a tactile, snappy, tasty.

Swapped in a MG5 tonearm w/ oxygen free copper and used Canare leads /w Eichmann bullets. Nice improvement.
Not sure if it just the Canare or the addition of the tonearm wire but it is clean, open, smooth, etc. There was a thickness to the sound which is now gone entirely.

Currently using SoundSmith fine line re-tpped DL-103 /w Uwe Panzerholz body. A Sumiko HS-12 headshell /w extra 3 gram weight. That's 7 extra grams at the headshell making the arm in the neighborhood of 19 gram effective weight.

The counterweight has the pipe cap with the aux weight screwed in.

Terminal strip for the arm swap:

Resource: http://www.djresource.eu/Topics/story/109/SL-1200-1210-Opening-the-Hood/

Details on the terminal strip:
GRENNAN AUDIO Twist-eye Terminal Strips
Bases made from ½” thick virgin PTFE (Teflon).
Twist-eyes made from burnished #14 awg OFHC Copper

Isolation ..... top down
cones
"northern hardwood" cutting board with feet in the juice guard for security
mvibrapods on seperate slate squares
granite paving stone dampened /w Blu TAc

8.30.2008