I’ve mentioned in the past that I haven’t used my turntable in many years and would likely sell it. I’ve had a bit of a change of heart recently and was curious to get it going again. I bought the Basis Ovation in about 1990 as well as the Graham 1.5t arm. The Basis is a heavy beast weighing in at 70 lbs. The dealer likely did the delivery and setup.
I spoke with Basis about a new belt, putting in new bearing oil and new fluid for the four adjustable pillars. The pricing was reasonable although the belt was over $100. The problem is the work involved in moving the table onto a counter to do the work. That’s problem number one. The next problem is the four pillars actually drop down for removal. So I would have to position the table to where I could remove one pillar at a time and also put books or whatever to support the corresponding area of the table.
Then there is the issue of getting a stand that is sturdy enough to support 70 lbs on the top shelf. I already have a Pangea stand from Audio Advisor, but the metal cross bracing isn’t separately available from Pangea. I would have to buy another stand from them with the braces included and that would run me $200. I also have a Don Sachs phono stage that I have yet to use. There would not be enough room for me to add both the turntable and the phone stage.
The Graham unipivot arm needs new oil/fluid and I bought that from Bob Graham a few years ago. I found that package today. I’m two hours from Las Vegas and maybe there’s a skilled tt specialist there. The table would still need to be loaded into my car for transit.
The table needs to be transported nearly flat so that the fluid in the pillars doesn’t leak out. The critical angle is no more than 15 degrees from horizontal.
So this is a lot of work to get it all going again. I guess I could sell the arm and tt and buy new. I’d take a hit on that, especially since I’m thinking about upgrading the Border Patrol dac and getting subs or new speakers. Audio sure is a great hobby