Epic SP-10Mk3 restoration project part I

[Ki Choi]

I had mentioned it elsewhere how I ended up with a Technics SP-10Mk3 and the saga of restoring it in Japan by a master and having it brought back to US on a business class seat. Here's what was done to it. (use Google Chrome and right click the mouse to translate the text into English. The site is hosted in Tanaka san's house and can be slow.)

http://amp8.org/amp-etc/record/technics/sp-mk3-g.htm

[MylesBAstor]

I had mentioned it elsewhere how I ended up with a Technics SP-10Mk3 and the saga of restoring it in Japan by a master and having it brought back to US on a business class seat. Here's what was done to it. (use Google Chrome and right click the mouse to translate the text into English. The site is hosted in Tanaka san's house and can be slow.)

http://amp8.org/amp-etc/record/technics/sp-mk3-g.htm

Wow! It was worth all the scrolling to get to the bottom! She' a beauty! What arm is on the table?

[Ki Choi]

When I had the Nottingham Dais turntable it came with a 12" Nottingham Anna carbon fiber arm. I liked it so much, I ordered a spare are just in case. In one of my fickle moments, I sold the Dais but kept the extra tonearm. I had to machine down the arm board on the plinth to fit the Anna arm but it is working well now.

[mep]

Ki-I saw these pictures before when you first posted them on another forum. It's a miracle that table works at all. It looks like it sat in someone's wet basement or garage and that it had a hard life before it was consigned to wherever to start rusting. Hat's off to the master for bringing it back to life.

The problem with a lot of SP-10 tables is they have been rode hard and put away wet. They usually have dinged up plinths and look like the human equivalent of someone who has been on meth for years. I hope you got a great price on the one you bought because I know that restoration couldn't have been cheap.

[Ki Choi]

I agree with your assessment, Mark. If you see from the early Tanaka san's photos, the mounting bolts on turntable's chassis were broken off - telling the story of physical hard life if must have lived. That's more of norm for these Mk3s due to most of them were used in commercial applications in radio stations or the way Bernie Grundman uses as motor drive for his lacquer cutting lathe. Like most of the studio master tape recorders I have, they seemed to have never received TLC. In tape machines case, time is money during sessions in a studio so techs would cannibalize one machine to get the other one going as fast as he can but never puts the poor machine back together.

If a Mk3 is cosmetically in good shape then majority of them would have electrical issues with three unobtainable Technics analog chips. As I got to understand the MK3's power supply/controller better likely cause of these critical chip failures were caused by power supply section going bad due to leaky electrolytic capacitor. If a person gets an old Mk3 and doesn't power up, the problem can be solved with capacitor rebuild and few known improvements in parts upgrade. However, most of them have one or more ICs damaged from the bad power supply rendering the turntable useless.

[mep]

If a Mk3 is cosmetically in good shape then majority of them would have electrical issues with three unobtainable Technics analog chips.

Remember, there is no such thing as obsolete chips as long as the Chinese have pin compatible chips and a set of stencils.

[MylesBAstor]

Remember, there is no such thing as obsolete chips as long as the Chinese have pin compatible chips and a set of stencils.