Breathing New Life Into An Old Michell Focus One Turntable

The Vinyl resurgence over the past few years has seen an enormous amount of old turntables being dragged out of the loft or garage, once cherished but now in a terrible state and left to gather dust. Sadly many of them can only ever head towards the landfill site, but every now and again a gem comes out of the woodwork.

A couple of weeks ago a customer called in with a turntable in a bag asking if we could have a look and see if we can get it going again. It had not seen the light of day many many years apparently. Opening up the bag we were amazed to see one of the all-time classic turntables - the Michell Engineering Focus One! Launched in the late 1970s it was Michell's first entry level turntable, shortly before the famous Gyrodec was produced.

With a very quick dusting it was clear that this was going to be quite easy to get going again. That thought was short lived. With a new drive belt fitted it was clear that there was a slight problem somewhere as the speed was nowhere near accurate. Further investigation revealed that the bearing and the bearing guides was in a very poor state indeed. A quick phone call to Michell and it was off in the post to see the doctor. It now looked in quite a sorry state but I knew it could be back to working order and looking great again in a matter of days.

Serious clean up needed!

A few days later the re-worked bearing arrived in the post in beautiful condition!

And whilst it was in as a dismantled state it gave me a chance to give it a spruce up.

Re-fit the bearing.......

It was now time to fire it up.......

As soon as the motor switch went to the on position it fired straight up to speed, I was certainly glad to see that! The bearing repair had worked a treat and everything was spot on. Considering it has a very modest cartridge fitted it sounded fantastic.

And now for the best part which is calling the customer to tell them that it is ready to go home.

Michell Engineering Hi-Fi products are available from the following branches of Audio T:
Brentwood, Manchester, Swansea