My cousin mentioned she had an old TT in their basement that I could have if interested. My eyes bugged out of my head when I saw a beautiful old Thorens. I don't think she had any idea what it was or what it's worth, so rather than her just giving it to me, we agreed to make it a long term loan.
It's in nice cosmetic shape, but needed some cleaning and service to get it to work. It lit up when plugged in, but the motor didn't spin. I've since discovered it was an early version, made circa 1958, and has an Ortofon ESL S-1000 tonearm with a GE mono cartridge.
It looked like the it had been serviced at some point in it's life, because the rubber all looks good, and the cord is not original. In the past week I've cleaned it up, disassembled and cleaned and lubed the motor, oiled the bearing, and cleaned and lubed the idler drive. It now spins and holds speed. The headshell connection is an EMT type that has the leads rotated 45 degrees from a standard shell, so am working on some solutions for that. Just ordered a Pickering V15 nude elliptical for it. I've also rewired the output for stereo. Looking forward to hearing it sing when the headshell parts and stylus arrive.
