Garrard Zero 100-C
Garrard's third-year Zero 100, refined with a built-in record counter and a $209.95 price tag - the company's own advertising called it the finest automatic turntable available at any price.
Overview
The Zero 100-C is the updated Zero 100, which was already in its third year of production when the C arrived. Garrard's own advertising in Audio (January 1974, p.7) pitched the C as a refinement, not a reinvention. The Zero 100 had earned "the overwhelming regard of the critics," and the new model added further advancements, most notably a built-in automatic record counter. The counter is the headline change.
The heart of the machine is the articulated, computer-designed Zero Tracking Error tonearm. It uses Garrard's patented geometry, and it is the reason the model exists. The company's pitch, repeated across its 1973-74 advertising, was that the arm's design had reduced tracking error to a virtually unmeasurable quantity. You can argue about "zero" as a literal figure. The idea itself is sound: the arm's articulation is meant to keep the stylus aligned in the groove as it travels across the record, instead of swinging through the arc of a conventional pivoted arm. Garrard's own copy in Audio (January 1975, p.11) put the goal plainly. The turntable and tonearm have "exceedingly simple and purely mechanical functions," and the emphasis was on precision rather than features for their own sake.
The C is a two-speed automatic, with variable speed adjustment of ±3% and an illuminated stroboscope for setting it. A magnetic anti-skating control handles the sideways force on the stylus, and stylus force is set with a sliding weight. There's 15° of vertical tracking adjustment, plus cartridge overhang adjustment. Cueing and pausing are damped in both directions, so the arm doesn't drop or lift abruptly. The motor is Garrard's patented Synchro-Lab synchronous design, the same basic approach the company used across its better automatic models.
Price at introduction was $209.95, per Garrard's own advertising in Audio (January 1974, p.7) and Audio (January 1975, p.11). That was the same figure the company quoted for the single-play Zero 100SB. It put the C at the top of Garrard's component line for the season, above the new Zero 92 (which inherited the Zero Tracking Error arm at lower cost) and the 82, 70, and 62 models introduced alongside it. Garrard was explicit that the entire series reflected the Zero 100-C's design philosophy. The C was the reference point, not the value leader.
For price context, a 1974 classified in Audio (March 1974, p.6) advertised a new Zero 100C with a walnut base and a Shure M44C cartridge as a package at $150. That is below the bare-table list price, the kind of mail-order discounting that was common at the time. The same issue's classifieds also show the era's used market, with SME arms, Stanton cartridges, and Dual turntables trading alongside the Garrard.
On the evidence available, the C is not a dramatically different turntable from the Zero 100 it replaced. The arm geometry, the Synchro-Lab motor and the two-speed automatic operation all carry over. The record counter and the accumulated refinements are the difference. Treat it as the mature version of the Zero 100 formula rather than a separate design. Check the condition of the articulated arm in particular, since that mechanism is the whole point of the model and the part most likely to need attention on a machine of this age.
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