John Nicholson, who was involved with PR for Source-Odyssey, found that thread and sent this pic he'd taken of me in the workshop at the Curle Street factory around 1988.
I started playing guitar and going to folk clubs as a teenager in Paisley, and I´m still playing guitar. I didn't think I'd still be making some hifi. That started as a consequence of the above-mentioned forum discussions and from the interest shown in the arms by a friend of mine, Fernando Palacios. I had helped him with designing some little valve amps for his system, and that got me looking out some old boxes which had been stored away, containing a couple of arms, some turntable parts and assorted bits and pieces. Then I needed a turntable for the house in Spain , and, as I didn´t have one of my own gold arms, I decided to make one, number 017, using some parts which I hadn´t used because of finish imperfections.
Since then I've done some repairs, made some long armtubes, and have enjoyed contributing to threads on various forums. After some raw tonearm bits turned up, I made up a couple of custom RP1-xg2 arms, in a chrome and satin anodised finish, and then some gold arms as well.
I had no intention to get involved in hifi production again, except in a minor way - a repair or make a custom item - but a few people have been trying to convince me it is a good idea. I'll certainly continue doodling designs for things but I'm not sure if I'll be the one to manufacture them!
When I started making the arms in 1981, I was based in Kilbarchan, in Renfrewshire and had been made redundant from a job with a modelmaking company. Being interested in hifi, I thought I´d have a go at the mechanical end of things, that being something I could do, given my training in machining and fitting. So I started from first principles but quickly realised that my meagre redundancy and the overdraft I could get from the bank wouldn´t allow me to make what I thought was necessary, so I had to compromise. The parts had to be able to be made "in house" almost literally.
My redundancy had involved a bit of paperwork: a notification form, a claim form and a form with the payment, so that gave me my model numbers: I would start with RP1, state my intent with RP2 and the money would roll in with RP3... Of course, it never worked out like that, but it was fun hearing the various guesses as to what the RP part signified.
When I started I thought that I´d have no chance against all these big companies, but, as it turned out, a large number of hifi manufacturers worked from spare rooms and garages, and even some of the bigger names were small enterprises with only a few employees.
I had a number of friends who were helpful in the development of the arm and I had my first taste of the hifi exhibition scene visiting the Harrogate Show in 1981 with Jim Cameron, a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic friend I'd known since our schooldays at Camphill Secondary in Paisley. We didn´t have a stand at the show, but at least we had a tee-shirt and some leaflets.
I used to go motorbike racing with Jim in the seventies - something which taught me that it is not always easy to get things to work... Long before that, Jim also provided the arm for my first turntable - the RC120H. It was a TP13 from a Thorens. Prior to that, I'd made my own out of aluminium bar, bent to what seemed to be the right angle.....
The first record player we had at home was an Ekco, a typical Dansette style design. Of course it would have had a mono amp, with a single-ended output and valves .... This would be in 1963.
But back to 1981. I converted the garage in Kilbarchan, and, with a lathe, a bench drill and a grinder to keep the tools sharp, I designed the RP1 to suit the manufacturing capability I had. The counterweights were too big for the lathe, so I had them made by a chap in Johnstone - Harry Uppington (left), who, it turned out, had made bits for the Fons and Strathclyde Transcription Developments turntables. 
From the garage in Kilbarchan, I moved to a bigger workshop in Millbrae, Johnstone.
Not the prettiest of places, but better than having to scrape frost off the lathe in the garage on winter mornings. The building housed a number of small firms, one of which was Ward and Dawson, a commercial jewellers, and Billy Ward was the guy who supplied the gemstones for the Gold Signature. He still does goldsmithing and sells jewellery from a shop, W. Ward 64 High Street, Johnstone.
There was a bit more room at Millbrae for laying stuff out, space round the machines, a bench for assembling the arms, and a proper "office". While at Millbrae I employed David Gow (right) to help with the polishing and machining.
The Britan was a nice machine, as was this Swedish drill-mill, which was great to use.
Here is Davie in Harry´s workshop making stainless steel nozzles for a power station exhaust, and there would occasionally be big gears to make for machines at the local carpet factory, or other more specialised items.
I wasn´t only hifi that was made at Mossedge. Here is a master for making a mould for racing car bodies. Duncan McLaren (seen here with me), and Allan McGilvray, both former modelmaking colleagues, came to the unit to build it. Allan, in the past, had also made bits such as headshells and damper parts for the original RP1. Duncan now makes super detailed models of vintage racing cars like this OSCA . See how they're made, like this Alfa Romeo, here.I attended some shows in the US and London, in Chicago and Las Vegas with the distributor, Winston Ma (below) and at Heathrow, using the arm on Source, Gyrodec and Zarathustra turntables.
Mike Rutz (below at Chicago CES) was an agent for both the Odyssey and Mike Moore´s Source Turntable.
I got divorced in 1987 and sold the house in Kilbarchan. I gave up the unit at Mossedge and sold off all the machinery and most of the hifi equipment. The rest I stored with friends and relatives and I went to work in Norway for a few months with Allan McGilvray, who had a modelmaking company there.
When the Source-Odyssey project was initiated, I got involved in that in an advisory capacity. Mike Moore (far left) had agreed to initially supervise the production of The Source, and Steven Lamb (left) and Jack Lawson handled the sales. Staff from D Lamb & Co. did machining and finishing work, and there was a production manager who ostensibly should have had things running smoothly, but who caused more problems than he solved...
Susan Black (far right) was involved in production, with Trevor Lee, and Rosanna, (right) Jack's then wife, was in admin.
After Source-Odyssey went into liquidation, I bought the arm parts from the Receiver, and from 1992 made arms until most of the bits were used up. I then had a business making control systems for exhibition displays.
When that finished, I did some modelmaking for a while in Glasgow, with Brian Gallagher, (left) who ate bananas while I worked...I also made most of the parts for a Gold Signature arm there.
Brian had his own modelmaking company, BG Models Ltd, which produced some of the finest architectural models you are likely to see.
Below is the finished version of the model with him in the picture above.
I then moved to London where I worked for KPF, a firm of architects.
In between times, I had a project to build pre and power amps with Jim Cameron and Charlie Bowie (seen here below in typical pose). Charlie still has his Source/Odyssey/Decca front end.
In 2008, after Charlie had found some tonearm bits which had been stored for 15 years at the back of a cupboard in his flat, I was able to make up a few custom RP1-xg2 (or RP1-xg3/RP1-Cr9/12) arms. Since then I have made occasional arms to order, including a couple of Gold Signatures.
