Rabco SL-8E Tone Arm

David Shreve, located in southern California, is still around after all these years and repairs and modifies these tonearms. Feel free to email me for his contact info.
Brian @

Dave is one of the good guys. He can probably repair one in his sleep, too. ;)

Win

Essential&Mosin, Is David 'the watchmaker' who used ruby
bearings for the Rabco and moded the armwand? In the 80is
or even before? The Rabco was/is very popular in Holland
but the aim by modifications was to make the arm lighter
(aka MM carts). So, among other, the balsa wood was used for the armwand.

I owned a Rabco for some time. I set it up with a carbon fiber arm wand, and developed a servo for the motor that actually worked. It prevented the arm from lifting off prematurely, skipping and also got rid of the servo activation noise.

The servo was rather simple. I built it up on a little circuit board and hid it inside the motor/battery box. As long as the contact resistance was below 1 megohm it worked fine. That made the arm a *lot* easier to live with!

Nandric, I believe the "watchmaker" of whom you speak was Herb Papier, the eventual inventor of the Triplanar tonearm. I think Herb used to tell me of his adventures with the Rabco. The Rabco was invented and built here in the Washington, DC/Maryland area as well, by an engineer named Rabinow. (Hence the name of the tonearm.) Herb was a watchmaker by trade (or more likely a watch-repairer), before he got into the crazy business of hand-made tonearms.