An Update on the turntable...
I decided to treat it to a nice Delrin platter as mentioned and 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" nonsense personally, I look at things with my engineers head on so fit what I feel is suitable.
I also checked the bearings and felt I could do better, 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.
Pics:
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.
Wires terminated with gold connectors.
Colour coded with heatshrink
Original phono leads terminated in "molded plastic", you can see how Rega "Ground" it...
Also I think somebody at Rega was having a bad day soldering
Modified plastic and PCB with better wires and separate ground:
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", not adjusted yet as I will do that on the turntable.
Tonearm Litz wire terminated to new Phono leads on modified PCB/Plastic.
Arm assembled:
