It's been a long road but worth it, a few weeks ago I finally had all the parts to get my DIY Teres spinning. This week the battery option arrived and it too was worth the wait.
About three years ago I had my first chance to hear a Teres and of course it had to be Chris Brady's personal table with a Schroeder Arm and a Benz Ruby. I was ruined on the spot. I came home babbling to my wife about the turntable I'd just heard. She is very understanding about my hobby but when she found out that it was a 10K setup the look on her face was priceless (or in this case close enough at 10K).
I also decided then and there that I would have one, somehow, someway, someday. Last summer I finally got the ball rolling, I bought a supposedly new Scheu motor from an ad on the site. Not quite the Teres motor but for $85 I figured that would be a great way to get started. Fast forward to October of '04 when I purchased slightly dinged Teres bearing from Chris Brady. Functionally perfect but with a cosmetic flaw that would not allow him to use it on a production model. Chris also had a older acrylic base that had been previously spoken for but the buyer never completed the transaction. He made me a very fair deal on the bearing and the base... leaving only the platter as the last piece.
I ordered up 20BF of 8/4 Cocobolo in 18" lengths and got to work milling it and ended up with a 13 x 13 x 3.5 inch slab of very heavy and beautiful Cocobolo. I have a very good friend who owns a small machine shop specializing in prototype and small run jobs and he was kind enough to use his CNC mill to carve out the platter with a final truing on the lathe.
As you can imagine I was stoked to get this baby spinning. This was in early November '04. Why did it take until now you might ask... When I went to fire up the motor it barely turned and cogged horribly. I had never tested it, believing it to be in good condition. Of course by this time I had no idea who I'd purchased it from. I disassembled it and attempted repair but it was fatally wounded somewhere in it's controller circuit, of which I had no knowledge.
About this time I started a new job and had almost no time on my hands so the project had to wait a couple of months until I could breathe again. After searching for a suitable but reasonably priced alternative I finally decided to bite the bullet and purchase a motor assembly from Chris. As I had already built a motor pod from a left over 1.5" thick piece of Cocobolo and some PVC I didn't really need the housing, just the motor/controller and top plate. Chris was once again most accommodating and sold me exactly what I needed with a price break for not buying the motor housing.
During the wait for the motor (Chris is back ordered about 2 months), I took the time to bore 12 2" x 2.5" deep holes in the bottom and fill them all with lead shot. Now that platter had some mass!
Finally about three weeks ago the motor assembly arrived. I put it all together and fired it up. I didn't (and still don't) have a really nice arm so I "borrowed" the arm from my MMF-5 along with the Grado Reference Platinum that was attached to it. Once the cartridge was aligned and set up properly it was sounding pretty good, orders of magnitude better than the MMF-5 ever had. I had a Scheu cartridge (a modified Benz Glider) sitting, waiting for this moment. I had traded some mod work months earlier for the cartridge in anticipation of getting the Teres up and running. Two weeks ago I put in the Scheu and aligned everything as accurately as possible and dropped the needle. It was glorious. With the Grado there were always some low frequency resonances I could not get rid of. The Scheu appears to match up just fine with the Music Hall arm and tracks beautifully. I know it would sound better with a nicer arm but for now I am just ecstatic. This week my battery option showed up and has raised the performance up another notch.
As any Teres owner knows, the PRaT of a Teres is simply astounding. The drive of the music is just fabulous and though it's been a long journey, it has been worth it. Now, I just need a better arm... Hmm, where are those measurements I took of Chris's Schroeder??
A big thanks to Chris Brady for making the components available to the DIY'er and to Randy Ray who owns Billet Brothers maching. I could not have done this without them. Thanks guys!
Mike G.
