Linkage Re-Plating

When only the best is good enough, we offer re-plating for the linkages and hardware on your turntable, done by a NADCAP AC 7004 certified precious metals lab.

The Garrard 301 linkages were plated in Cadmium. Cadmium is a toxic cumulative heavy metal. In situ, it is not a threat, but any Cadmium plated parts should be handled with caution. If your linkages look poor, or if you want them plated, we acid strip the Cadmium off, and re-plate them in yellow zinc.

Before sending the linkages off to be plated, we disassemble them fully, removing every rivet, and reducing the entirety of the linkages and hardware into individual parts, which are individually hung in the plating chamber. We have seen quite a few 301’s which have been re-plated, where the linkages were simply re-plated without disassembling them. This results in some areas of the linkages not being plated. If you have one of these decks, you can tell by looking at the joints of where the linkages are, if you see missed areas, they were re-plated whole. We feel that this is ‘cutting corners’, though it does save time. We also see decks where the idler wheel bushings were not removed prior to plating. In our opinion, this is a definite no-no, as the plating increases the clogging in the porous structure of the sintered bronze idler wheel bushings, sealing in 50+ years of contaminants. Idler wheel bushings should almost always be replaced, both the upper and lower bushings, and definitely the bushing in the upper idler wheel carrier plate should always be removed before plating. If your upper idler wheel bushing looks like the same fresh plating as your linkages, your bushing went into the plating chamber. It should be replaced.

We also offer re-plating for the linkages, hardware, and motor case on the TD124. This is done in the same metal as Thorens used, except that it is done to a higher degree of quality. This is a gorgeous finish.