As most of you know by now, I have recently bought from TonyD a lovely Thorens TD 125. Tony had carried out a superb restoration including refinishing the wooden plinth, and repainting the top plate and arm board satin black. He had also applied 'Dynamat' to the chassis as recommended.

I have now carried out a few subtle mods to lift the performance but keep the original concept and period look of this classic machine.

It is recommended to dampen the arm board as well as the chassis so I have applied 'Dynamat' here also.

The original arm leads from the SME arm were a little tired so I have cut them short and carefully dressed them to connect to RCA jacks installed on the rear of the plinth. This achieves two things, the 'dressing' ensures the wires do not restrict the chassis movement, and it allows the use of alternative RCA interconnect cables.

The earth wire connects to this terminal block also to ground the arm and the floating chassis. I have replaced the original 2 wire power cable with a 3 wire so that the main chassis, which carries the motor and circuit board, can be grounded for safety reasons. The arm and floating chassis is not connected to the mains ground.

It is usually recommended to replace the thin baseboard with something thicker. I have decided against this purely for cosmetic reasons as I feel it will spoil the look of the plinth. Instead I have glued a piece of felt tile to the inside of the baseboard which should help dampen it. The suspension has been checked and adjusted to level the top plate with the plinth surround. The adjusting cups had a thin coat of vaseline applied to the threads to help them rotate.

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The RCA connections allow the use of short leads ( 500mm ) to the Graham Slee preamp.

The SME 3009 series 2 was in perfect condition and IMO is the perfect match for this vintage machine.

An interesting bit of trivia I discovered was that as Thorens were moving their manufacturing from Switzerland to Germany, the TD125 was manufactured for them by EMT. No wonder it is built like a bullet proof tank.

I have installed a Shure V15 III with a new JICO stylus.( Not the SAS unfortunately). which is a perfect match and again period correct.

I have treated it to a brand new acrylic dust cover and hideously expensive Linn hinges. The feet were donated from a dead Pioneer amplifier.

This is definitely a 'keeper' that sits proudly next to my Oracle Delphi. A genuine classic that still looks and sound wonderful 48 years later.

Me biased of course I am.

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Lovely Jubbly..Graham, nice to see, and nice work  . Have a big soft spot for Thorens decks myself 

Never play Leapfrog with a Unicorn.

I was very reluctant to let this go so it's great to see that it has been further fettled by the Thorens master and treated to a new dust cover.