Although visitors liked the sound of it, I myself thought that some coloring was evident. The balsa arm has a uni pivot with no play at all. If you pull the arm towards you in the vertical plane you can feel that there is no play. That is one explanation for that incredible transient. So a very important goal when building the second arm was to achieve an excellent transient.
Hobbyists always have parts and stuff from ancient times.
The platter was meant to serve in a record cleaning machine which I intended to build myself. The intention vanished when I bought a real professional Keith Monks machine. The arm of the Lenco could have parts that I could use. But I discovered that the vertical bearing had enormous play and this would kill any transient drastically. As you know the tiniest amount of play is disastrous.