© Francisco Rodriguez, 2008

Friends of Audio Nirvana, first of all I want to thank Ernest Ruiz for this web site and for helping me in the publishing of this analog experience that I'm going to explain.

My name si Francisco Rodriguez and I'm 47. I'm buying music since I was a child, so I have a good vinyl and CD collection of different genres. I have had several hifi systems and always with the vinyl as reference format, but also with reel-to-reel tapes, because I believe that even being old systems they deliver very good and natural sound.

Some months ago my good friend Jesús Alvarez, who knows very well the music world, found a second hand Thorens TD127 turntable for a reasonable amount of money. He talked to me about the excellences of the TD127 so I decided to buy it. During all these years I have had many different turntables from japanese manufacturers as well as tonearms and cartridges, but this is my first Thorens, and now I can say that I will never sell it.

The Thorens TD 127 was built between 1983 and 1984 and it is a model prepared for 12" tonearms. It is almost identical to the TD 126 MK III both with 72 pole motor. The main difference is in the frame and the weight, 15 kg. for the TD126 and 22kg for the TD127. I point this because the TD127 are scarce and the TD126 are not, due the number of units made, and, so, they are easy to find in the 2nd hand market. When I received the TD127 the first I noticed was that it was in very good condition. The first I did was to remove the tonearm because it wasn't correctly adjusted. But then I began to think about making more changes and improvements to the turntable. So I decided to do what I'm going to explain you. The main objective was to take the TD127 one step further.

First I made some templates to test different tonearms. I have a SME 3009 series III, a SME series IV, an Origin Live Silver, etc, but my friend Jesús brought me a classic 70s tonearm, still new in its box, a 12" Stax UA 70 (the japanese version of the SME 3012). With this tonearm things got better, because being a simply unipivot design it is very musical. I also tried a SME 3012 with silver wiring, bronze bearing, etc.

After the tonearm, I began the search in the internet for more information and I found the work of Rolf Kelch, a turntable guru, and with patience and after intensive searching I began to modify the TD127. I used 3M damping material to soften resonances in the turntable frame. The third step was to build a new 40mm MDF base (the original one is 17mm thick) that increased the weight of the turntable to 30kg. In addition 4 silentblocks were used as feet in the new base.

Then, I focused on the turntable axis. After some research, I realized that the best turntables use 14 and 15 mm of diameter axis. So I tried to find a Thorens TD 124 axis and with the help of my friend Santiago, a wonderful metal worker, I replaced the original axis in a second hand TD126 MKIII subplatter that I bought in Ebay with the TD124 axis. This modification included an aluminium piece to cover the original hole for the 45 rpm adapter that was in the original subplatter. All these changes were made in the TD126 subplatter because I wanted to keep the TD127 subpletter in original condition in order to reverse the operation if it was not satisfactory. All the modifications respect the original look of the turntable, except the new base (btw, it was painted in the same colour as the original one).

After all the work I tought that all was done but when I began to listen music in the TD127 I found a quite dark sound. After some tests, I decided to clean the axis that had old grease on it. I replaced it with SAE10 motor oil and things got better. Some days later my friend Jesús told me that the bearing that I was using was a 6mm one and that the TD124 was using a 6,35 mm unit. I change it and to my surprise this was a real improvement. The turntable finally showed its real sound wit a deep, extended and structures bass.

For many people a turntable is something simple. Thorens built its tunrtables in Zamak (a zinc and aluminium alloy) and this material gives to the turntables they special sound. Thorens introduced many impovements in turntable building that were used by other manufacturers like Linn, AR, Oracle etc, for example, the effective 3 spring suspension.

With all the modifications the turntable increased weight and with the adjustments in the suspension you could knock on the plynth and this sound didn't reach the speakers. I tried to change the original springs and rubber rings with the ones from a Linn LP12. After measuring the original springs with the LP12 springs we decided to combine the original ones with the LP12 rubber rings in order to compensate the extra weight .

The final estep was to build a new external power supply unit. We used a toroidel 18v transformer mounted in a external box with IEC connector for power cord and fuse to avoid overloads to the TD127.

Now the TD127 is fitted with a Stax tonearm a Benz L2 wood cartidge and a Yamamoto wood headshell and it sounds wonderful. It has a rich, vivid and dinamic sound. My friends had listened it and they believe that it is amazing. And some of them have very expensive turntables. Now I want to try some more things, for example the Garrard 301 has a concave platter (the inner part of the platter in 1mm lowest than the outer part). With this idea in mind a japanese manufacturer named Tama made a metal platter fot this turntables. Micro Seiki also built the Gun Metal in cooper or Nagaoka in crystal. There are many other things to do that I will try in a future in order to improve more this wonderful turntable.

As you can see with some ideas and good friends you can improve a lot your turntable without spending a lot of money. A second hand TD126 is not expensive. From 250 € it can be found and they represent a good chance to have an excellent turntable. If you want to ask me anything regarding this article or the Thorens TD127 turntable, please feel free to contact me at thorens127@gmail.com. Any idea, suggestion or opinion will be welcome.