Quad 303 amplifier & Quad 33 Pre-Amp

[rubber_jonnie]

Construction is just beautiful. I pulled all the PCBs and cleaned the contacts with IPA followed by a cotton bud with a little Electrolube.

It is interesting to see that the electronics of those days was a lot more colorful...

Very nice construction, reminds me of my school days where we learned to tie the cables together this way...

Yes, they don't seem to build them like that any more.

[chronicthehedgehog]

Same tonearm as I have on my 160. Still a very good tonearm. I could never justify spending £300 on an SME :D

Yep the springs on Thoren's decks need a bit of tweaking - same as the 160. The plinth should be quite bouncy. I set mine up about 8 years ago but I've forgotten the details tbh. I just remember spending a lot of time wondering 'is it setup correctly' - until I learned to stop worrying about it :D

[rubber_jonnie]

Same tonearm as I have on my 160. Still a very good tonearm. I could never justify spending £300 on an SME :D

Yep the springs on Thoren's decks need a bit of tweaking - same as the 160. The plinth should be quite bouncy. I set mine up about 8 years ago but I've forgotten the details tbh. I just remember spending a lot of time wondering 'is it setup correctly' - until I learned to stop worrying about it :D

With the missing isolation washer/washer/nut it is alll over the place though and I am just making a mold to see if I can make some new ones. I'll get to the springs once I have that resolved :)

[rubber_jonnie]

So, I made a mold from one of the isolation washers and cast a replacement in RTV silicone to test it out.

IMG20250112113059.jpg

Unfortunately the original didn't survive the process as the rubber was failing anyway, but the mold does work as you can see from the new one.

Sadly the new one is not rigid enough to work, but it does at least prove the mold works.

I need to find a better material for the washers, but I think making them is definitely on.

[stephen_usher]

Maybe find someone nearby who has a 3D printer which can print TPA and get them to print you a set?

[rubber_jonnie]

Maybe find someone nearby who has a 3D printer which can print TPA and get them to print you a set?

Not a bad idea, wondering if it might be a good point to pull out my 3d printer and give it a service, though I'm not sure if it's suitable for TPA.

Would be very easy to model.

[rubber_jonnie]

OK, so I revisited the rubber washers and found something on eBay (Chineseum I think) that is a 2 part rubber, but it's not silicone, it actually sets as a relatively hard rubber and in a matter of hours too.

So I used that in my original mould and I'm quite pleased with the results.

IMG20250202142334.jpg

The 2 little jars are the material and it takes about .5g of each to make the washers, so a total of 1g, mixed until the colour is even.

The leftmost washer is the RTV silicone version, way to soft and floppy, but the middle one is this new rubber and it is almost identical in density and flexibility to the original shown on the right.

I have to say that it's a really good result, so I'm going to make another 5 (One is in the mold already :) ) in order to replace all 6 on the turntable.

Pretty pleased with this outcome.