Kenwood KD-500 Turntable with Grace G-707 Tonearm and Upgrades Galore

This is a Kenwood KD-500 with tons of upgrades.

For starters, I completely disassembled the turntable to service the motor and controls.  The tone-wheel was cleaned, and the spindle was cleaned and lubricated.  I replaced the electrolytic capacitors in the power supply for peace of mind and serviced the switches.  I cleaned everything and began reassembly.

Throughout this project I made major improvements to many aspects of this turntable. The plinth is very study and heavy, but the factory feet didn’t isolate vibrations well.  I addressed the dampening by installing IsoAcoustic GAIA III feet.  With these feet isolation to vibrations is vastly improved and it is much quieter overall.

I then worked on the Grace G-707 tonearm.  I rewired the arm with Cardas 33awg shielded Litz wire.  The shielded wire is awesome, and I ran the shielding to the ground-pin. When the turntable is grounded to the preamp, the tonearm shield is the only connection to the ground. This removes all interference from the motor and outside factors.  I terminated the new tonearm wire into Cardas Rhodium Cartridge Clips.  These are excellent quality ends that grip cartridge pins reliably.  I cleaned and lubricated all the bearings and reassembled the tonearm to factory specs.  I installed a new Hadcock headshell in place of the cheap plastic headshell used by Grace.  The tonearm wire is a Silvercord Plus and is 1 meter long.

The Kenwood tonearm mount was replaced with a solid piece of aluminum machined specifically for this turntable.  The center bore of the mount is 25mm and is off-center by about 10mm.  The mount is finished in black wrinkle paint.  Finally, I installed a new Ortofon 2M Bronze Cartridge to the arm. 

I set the alignment, azimuth, tracking weight, and began testing.   No surprise, the turntable is amazing.  It’s a great design that still looks modern and maintains excellent vintage build quality. 

This turntable is in excellent condition with just a few minor imperfections on the dust cover.  If you have any questions about the Kenwood KD500 please let me know.  Thanks, -Bob