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Posted by mellankali on Feb-06-2004 00:00:

Turntable repair...

Hey Everybody-

As I posted a while ago, my tone arm was broken while transporting my dekcs across the US (incompetent TSA). I tightened the screws as suggested to deal with the extreme anti-skate effect, but alas now my tone arm is messed up again.

Whenever I spin a record, the needle will take the groove, but it won't advance. It will just loop the same groove over and over again. Every time the record makes a complete spin there is a little clicking noise as it jumps grooves.

The tone arm itself feels really loose, and the lifting lever hardly supports the arm when I engage it. I've attempted to tighten down any screws I can find, but this has been no help.

My question thus becomes, does any body know any place in New England (preferably Connecticut) that repairs turntables? Like, can I just take them to a local music store that repairs instruments and trust them enough to actually fix it?

Any suggestions/advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
Jesse

Posted by punchline on Feb-06-2004 01:10:

It's possible you tightened it too tight, or tightened the wrong screw. Most tonearms use a gimbal suspension. There is an inner screw, and another screw surrounding that. the outer screw actually tightens the tonearm, while the inner screw locks the outer screw in place so you have to loosen it first to tighten the arm.

You can tighten the suspension this way to get rid of play in the tonearm. If you tighten it too much though, it won't work right. It will have too much force trying to pull it away from the center and will cause the needle to skip, especially in close to the center of the record.

It's basically a balance of removing as much play as possible, while still keeping it able to work. The suspension wears down like everything else though. If the tonearm is old or damaged, no amount of playing around will get it to work. If it's doing what you say it is, a new tonearm might be your best bet.

Posted by mellankali on Feb-07-2004 00:39:

well...

i spent about 2 hours this afternoon tinkering around with the screws on my table, and i finally got it fixed! it took a while to understand what the suspension was responding to, but once i got all the screws out and put them back in, i had a good idea of what was effecting what.

thanks for the help :-)

now i won't have to go the place that told me flat out over the phone they were going to have to order me a new tone arm, without even looking at the deck.

much obliged.
jesse