Thorens BTD-12S – the whole story

Thorens BTD-12S – the whole story

In one of my previous posts I was rambling about my new (to me) salvage tonearm. It was almost thrown to garbage but due to a happy accident and misinformation it came into my possesion.

I was lucky that the arm was (almost) complete, including a headshell from another Thorens tonearm, but at least it was a nice little blank canvas for me to play with.

The arm was bought as a parts donor but seing it that it is complete, i decided to use it with my Thorens TD124MK2 turntable. Almost period correct 🙂

Since then I serviced it completely, it was dismantled to the smallest bolt and ball. Nothing was left in one piece. The arm received new wires, new vertical movement ball bearings (same as on EMT 929, Thorens TP-25, etc.), new horizontal movement bearings where needed.

I added antiskating using some 3D printed plastic parts, straightened and fixed the lift.

Another non standard addition was the counterweight made in Sergey Rogoziansky in Ukraine, since the original one was designed for much heavier headshell/cartridge combination. I reduced the weight from approx. 130 to 95 grams and now i have much more range of cartridges to play with.

Today i am using a retipped Denon DL-103 cartridge, graphite naked body installed on a graphite headshell from Audiosilente . Wow.

The pictures show a somewhat chronological order of the arm dismantled then put back together.

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