Garrard 301-Worth the effort?

Jonathan - apart from the hyperbole, I do like your gear, and the plinths look great.......cheers.

Mosin, my deepest apologies, apparently no one aside from you is allowed to have or state their own opinion......

"I do support the DIY community along with my friends in the cottage industry, and I know and consider Steve Dobbins to be in that extended family. He is one of the good guys. So is Nantais, although we have been at odds from time to time"

Now we all know another shill lurking in the midst. Welcome to the club! J

"And I must apologize to you and this forum, for the lack of substantiation of my comments in that piece. I did indeed contact the National Bureau of Standards and the National Academy of Science for third party verification of my assertions, but they were too busy substantiating all of the other Audiogon poster's claims."

One of the top 10 posts in the history of Audiogon ;-)

When a "Manufacturer" writes that Schroeder and Schick are among the best Tonearm Manufacturers in the world, then it is a slap in the face of every serious Designer who has some (University) knowledge about Design, Distortion, Material, Energy transfer and knowledge what-is-responsible-for -what. A knife and a piece of wood is hardly enough, even when Marketing and DIY Voodoo replace it all.
A "Manufacturer" who has no idea about anything and replaces that with blubbering phrases others tell or told him, may be a nice guy, but hardly someone who can be taken serious.
When a Plinth needs 100lbs to dampen the rattling main unit then it is wasted time to discuss any turntable design when such a rattling unit is hyped as a ultimate solution. Maybe you paid the Schroeder Arms with your Plinth, or whatever, I am not seriously interested in these kind of background, but you should try to understand what you do. I guess, you will never get it and don't take it personal, you are not alone. It is much easier to buy an old 300$ turntable (Garrard, Technics, Denon...) and to "refurbish" it with a multi-thousand Dollar Chassis and there are customers out there who also have no idea about what is a tonal right reproduction. Idler Drive is not among that. It never was. It is a result from an era where no other solutions were available. And solidity is not a part of good sound which more modern and better designed units can offer. Mainly it is Entertainment today. And the comments and named products show clearly, OMA is Entertainment. High End Audio actually used to have a goal: perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space. That was found difficult to achieve, and it was abandoned when most music lovers, who almost never heard anything except amplified music anyway, forgot what "the real thing" had sounded like. Today, "good" sound is whatever one likes.
After all, the desperate Audiophile can - and will - still say "... but I like it."
That is normally the final comment for everything today.
So I asked my Mom to visit that video first. She did and said:"Boy, it's time to got to bed"

Dover, you have to read between the lines sometimes and with tongue in the cheek - "ever" is actually factually and irrefutably true in my systems and in my personal experiences and cannot be denied in my universe - but there are parallel universes (according to Fringe that is)