Cool. RD 40 was very good but it had far too many machined parts in it for the price it sold at.
I worked to reduce the parts count and hence cost across the range , it's amazing how much you can strip out without reducing performance. At the same time Q Board appeared and we incorporated that into various designs. We laminated batches of board with the VE adhesive supplied from QLN in Sweden.
I had a budget prototype similar to a Rega in format , using Q Board for the plinth. It surpassed the much more complex RD80 by a scary amount. It became the RD50. Most of the things that made the RD50 work were incorporated into the RD80 although visually you would hardly know. Here's a RD50/60 The line around the plinth is where the VE adhesive is. You can't quite see where the arm mounting collar has been eliminated
Simple things , for example the arm pillar used to be made with a mounting collar that then bolted on to the deck's mounting plate. We binned the collar ( making the Jelco arms cheaper incoming 500 at a time ) and machined the arm mounting plate to incorporate the pinch screw for the arm pillar. Got rid of the cork gasket also.
Result was a worthwhile improvement in clarity.
In production every penny counts and if you can reduce costs AND improve quality then , you are a winner.
I was messing about with Q board for chassis inside the suspended decks with some success , the RD 110 was in need of a re vamp. I left for the US before I got to that.
Sorry about the thread Hi Jack