My review loanerserial number G003arrived during the last week of August, shipped in a heavy-duty carton made specifically for the new 301 and its companion products: an SME M2-12R tonearm, the model number of which reflects its approximate effective length in inches (it's actually 308.81mm, or 12.16"), and a plinth whose generous (25.5") width was obviously meant to accommodate that transcription-length SME. According to Shirke, the Cadence Group will make spare 301 parts available to purchasers of new Garrard 301s, as needed. Cadence now continues to manufacture Loricraft record-cleaning machines, but has shut down Loricraft's repair and restoration business, as well as their business of commissioning and supplying spare parts for the 301 and 401. At the same time and in a separate arrangement, Cadence purchased from Terry O'Sullivan the Loricraft company, which designed and manufactured under their own name a line of very fine record-cleaning machines, and whose licensing agreement with Gradiente had allowed them to service Garrard turntables and to manufacture a turntable called the Garrard 501. Here it's worth noting that, contrary to some reports, in 2018 the Cadence Group purchased all things Garrardits designs, its knowledge base, all of its logos, everythingfrom Gradiente Electronics of Manaus, Brazil, which had acquired them in 1979. Indeed, in my email correspondence with him, Shirke stressed SME's intention to manufacture new Garrard 301s precisely as they were made during their original run, without attempting to second-guess or "improve" so much as a single element of the original design (footnote 2). As Shirke pointed out, SME, which in the day manufactured a number of parts for Garrard, is already in the process of tooling up to manufacture new platterswhich, like the originals, will be cast and then machine-finished, rather than machined from solid as with many aftermarket 301 platters. The plan was for the company to gradually phase in a greater proportion of new parts as older stocks were depleted. Combined with these would be a relatively few newly manufactured parts. Then, in time for my August 2019 Listening column, it was revealed that the first wave of new Garrard 301s wouldn't be entirely new: Rather, they would be built with mostly refurbished used parts (chassis, platters, motor casings) and new-old-stock parts (various fittings and springs). Still others reacted with the sort of belligerence one sees in film clips from 1963, when reporters would go around Liverpool asking early fans of the Beatles how they felt about the spread of Beatlemania: They resented the fact that their group would now belong to the world. Others wondered how the 301's reintroduction would affect those whose livelihoods depend, at present, on the demand for restoring and maintaining existing samples. It was into this world that SME, in the person of Ajay Shirkea noted record collector who is also the chairman of the Cadence Group, which owns SME and other audio brandsdropped their 2018 bombshell. Prices of old 301s began to poke through the cloud cover, and a cottage industry formed around the restoration of old 301s and the making of compatible plinths. Then something happened: Audio enthusiasts with a taste for vintage gearthose willfully ignorant fools who prefer cleanly designed low-power tube amplifiers, built without a cylinder head's worth of aluminum, and very efficient, low-distortion loudspeakersdiscovered that idler-drive turntables were virtually unique in their ability to reproduce music with its sense of drive and impact still intactsurely a product of those generally high-torque motorsand decided that the Garrard 301 was one of the best, if not the best, of the breed. (Its mechanically similar replacement, the 401, was even more popular.) Its high-torque AC motor and idler-wheel drive ensured the fast startups required by broadcasters, and its timeless styling and obviously high-quality construction earned it a place of honor among the hi-fi perfectionists of its day.īut when belt-drive turntables, which are cheaper to build, came into vogue, idler-drive models lost their lusteralbeit not before Garrard sold an estimated 65,000 301s. It was also enduring it stayed in production through 1965. At the time of its introductionproduction began in 1953success for the British-built 301 was instant. I wasn't with this one.Ī brief recap: At the 2018 High End show in Munich, UK-based SME announced that they had taken steps to reintroduce the classic Garrard 301, a transcription turntable that's been out of production for more than half a century (footnote 1). Because I tick both boxes, and in spite of my best efforts to the contrary, I'm often a bit blasé in the face of new review samples. Some loss of innocence is expected with both age and experience.