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How to rewire your SL 1200, 1600, 1700, or 1800 MK II tonearm.

Posted by tubesforever (M) on January 24, 2009 at 19:39:06

Here are some pictures and descriptions on how you can rewire a Technics tonearm with higher quality tone arm and interconnect wire.

First, you should verify that your arm and its bearings are functioning properly and are within specifications.

Here is a picture of the lower horizontal bearing on one of the tonearms I had to repair. This was damaged in some sort of DJ nightmare of epic proportions. This gets tossed away. Replacement pieces are cheap and easy to obtain. Make sure to verify the condition of the bearings before doing a rewire.

Some have asked me if you can rewire an arm with it mounted to the subchassis. I would recommend against that. The arm is not difficult to remove and if you try doing it on the table you would need at least one extra set of hands to accomplish the process.

The tonearm you see here is actually two arms put together into one working arm. The tonearm base came from an SL1200, SL1600, SL1700, or SL1800 MKII. They are all same base piece. The arm wand and bearings are from an SL1200 MG5.

This is the completed tonearm project. The wire is Monster IL-250 and the monster RCA ends are actually very nice quality pieces. You can select any IC of your choice or simply run Cardas 33 awg continuous from bayonet to RCA input if you wish.

You can see that the wand is not chromed but rather a satin finish on the MG5 arms. I like this look! The headshell is the adjustable LP gear headshell and it has ultra nice litz wire from the leads to the cartridge. It also sports azimuth adjustment. I love this for both stiffness and for overall quality. It should be equivalent to the Audioquest H-12.

I rewired the arm wand with Cardas 33 awg tonearm wire purchased from Percy Audio. Other vendors also supply this wire. It is 6 nines pure, with a nice dielectric shield that melts away under heat. This makes tinning and soldering a lot easier than many smaller gauge wires I have used. I simply soldered all five tonearm wires (red, green, white, blue and black for grounding) to one of the existing wires at the stock pcb board and carefully pulled them through the tonearm wand.

My friend also supplied some Monster Cable IL-250 wire to run from the base plate to the phono input. I am hoping it will sound as good as my last arm I wired for him.

On the previous arm we used Beldin 1505B. This is some really fine wire. It is actually a high definition coax cable. The inner conductor is composed of high purity copper strands and it is double shielded. The wire is rated for 2ghz in high definition video applications.

On both of these tone arms, the replacement wire was so stiff and heavy that I decided to build special mounting plates from electronic project boards. This allows me the ability to provide proper stress relief and to solder the tonearm wire directly to the Cardas wire. This bypasses the stock Technics PCB board which I feel is essential to getting the best possible sound.

Here is a picture of the custom board. I had to drill a small hole at the bottom end of the inner white vinyl arm piece in order to mount a screw to provide 3 points of attachment. This is important, I do not want the board flexing or distorting. 3 connection points is important for these heavier wires.

When you have the arm apart to rewire, now is the time to do a full disassembly and lubricate the mechanism. I used synthetic brake grease for this. You can see this as a very pale green color on the aluminum surface of the cast aluminum piece. It is thicker than the plain grease that Technics used back in the day, it offers a more subtle resistance to unwanted movements as you adjust the VTA and it will last a life time.

The Technics arm is a high quality piece. Everything is precision cast and machined. The plastic molded pieces are superb quality and are equally engineered to the precision machine work. In fact it might be one of the best designed VTA on the fly mechanisms I have found in vinyl. Most of the tolerances for the arm are within a half thousandths or one thousands of an inch. It is more precise than the earlier SME tonearms I have worked with.

The VTA is accomplished by three pieces. The bottom base piece is cast aluminum and is machined for a fine thread. Then an intermediate brass piece works in connection to the internal mounting piece. By spinning that intermediate piece you can lift or lower the tonearm 6 millimeters. Simply select an appropriate thickness platter mat to accommodate shorter or taller cartridges and you can dial in the VTA in mere seconds. I can adjust VTA on the fly on any of the Technics tables I have owned or modified.

When it comes time to solder the Cardas to the bayonet pins you need to exercise caution. The heat from the iron will ruin the spring loaded feature of the bayonet pints. Here is a picture of the bayonet assembly disconnected from the arm tube.

To prevent damaging this critical piece, I simply attach a headshell to act as a heat sink while I solder on the Cardas wires. I use a thin piece of heat shrink to cover the solder joints once the soldering is done. You can also save the clear vinyl insulation pieces from your Technics bayonet if your are careful. I like to reuse these when I can.

The Cardas wire’s insulation melts away rapidly, so use tweezers or needle nose plyers to prevent excessive insulation loss.

You can see my needle nose plyers. When I did the tinning on the 33 awg wire that was directly against the bead at the end of the wire. If not there the wire insulation would have melted back another 1/4 inch.

BTW using tweezers or needle nose plyers to accomplish the tinning is a trick that Garth shared with the Asylum. Cardas was one of his preferred tone arm wires for good reason. It sounds excellent and is cost effective.

I use silver bearing Wonder solder for my projects. Kester brand tin/lead solder would also be an outstanding solder for this purpose.

The project from start to finish took about 6-8 hours because of the custom mounting plate. The sonic results will be impressive since it is the stock wire that really holds back the performance of the Technic tone arms.

One last comment, regarding my custom mounting plate, you can see there is ample room to attach chassis RCA connectors at that point. A set of high quality chassis connectors would be under 20 dollars. Then you could simply plug in and out the IC’s of your choice.

KAB builds a custom rewire mounting plate or an chassis mounted RCA connection piece for the SL 1200 turntables. Both are excellent quality and would work well if you prefer someone else to accomplish this level of modification.

I highly recommend Kevin’s work to improve the Technic table. Not only is KAB providing great products and services, Kevin is also an outstanding guy to talk to about your project.

Also consider his silicone dampening system and power supply for the SL1200 platform. These are great ways to elevate the performance of any SL1200 turntable.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Schiit Audio

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