Garrard Zero 100

One of the most clever ideas to push vinyl replay to the limit - and a simple one, too.
Garrard however didn't invent it but resurrected it from the distant 1950s.

If it has a pivot, the tonearm is in fact tangential : the headshell is gradually skewed to keep a constant angle equivalent to that of the groove.
The culprit is... the Zero wasn't built very well and was made of fairly cheap materials for the most part.


There were quite a few versions of the Zero 100, throughout the 1970s :

Zero 100 : idler drive changer with variable pitch, stroboscope and white/gold looks,

Zero 100S : as above plus variable stylus angle but not a changer,

Zero 100SB : with a large base,

Z2000B : belt & idler driven with an aluminium base,

GT 55P : belt-driven with a Beryllium-loaded Zero tonearm (!),

...and many many more in between.
And I don't know if the GT 55P really had a Beryllium-loaded Zero tonearm - what would Beryillium be useful for there ?

The simplest way, however, is direct tangential groove reading...


A compleat set of resources on TNT-audio :
review, test, and listening test.