Removing the Quartz Lock on 1200's

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-- Removing the Quartz Lock on 1200's

Posted by ��|E on Nov-24-2005 08:48:

Removing the Quartz Lock on 1200's

The quartz lock is an ingenous little device that works to return the turntable platter to the particular pitch you've set - no matter how much resistance is going for or against the current speed. You may have noticed when you're pushing or pulling your record while pitching up or down that its not as precise as what you're trying to achieve- sometimes over or under compensating (you slow it down, the motor tries to compensate by speeding it up, and vice versa). Removing this quartz lock makes pitch setting far more responsive and fluid... and thus much easier.

This is extremely easy to do. What you will need is a set of wire cutters - and perhaps a little piece of blu-tac to put on the severed ends for piece of mind (so that they wont accidentally reconnect). First of all, you need to make sure your turntable is unplugged, and that you have removed the turntable platter. Unscrew all 5 screws on the rubber guard that is now in front of you and remove it. Now take a look at the electrics there and take a look at the pic provided.

All you have to do is find and then cut the connection to the TP17 Resistor (prety much down the bottom right of the board). Thats it =]. When cutting, make sure you cut it so that you can re-solder this in the future if you so desire. You can put the blu-tac on both severed ends now if thats you're thing.

SOURCE

Pro's
Faster beatmatching (apparently)

Con's
Clubs aren't going to have this (i'd say this is the deal breaker)

Im just wondering if anyone has done this or seen this or even heard about this and ur thoughts on it?

Posted by ��|E on Nov-24-2005 19:28:

no-one .... 52 views and no clue? (yeah i got no idea either) i posted it cause a friend of mine and i were discussing it and he's considering doing it, thought someone might be able to shed some more light on it, good old TA's (apparently not though)

Posted by SpecRadio on Nov-24-2005 23:29:

I'm going to try it when my 1210mk2 comes in a few days. If anything goes wrong, it all looks pretty easy to fix. Just some basic soldering.

Posted by djkoolaide on Nov-25-2005 04:01:

Seriously, do it. Everyone should, when I get my Techs that will be the very first thing I do. It's so frustrating mixing on decks with quartz lock because the only way to make slight adjustments is to either ride the pitch (which I can do but prefer not to) or to touch the vinyl, which can really fuck up if you're not careful. Without the quartz lock, you can gently touch the platter and make very slight, precise adjustments.

Posted by Laszlo on Nov-25-2005 20:17:

SO THAT'S WHY I'M HAVING THE HUGE F-ING PROBLEMS BEATMATCHING WITH MY DECKS?! Sorry for caps lock but god damn have I struggled with getting the beatmatching spot on...with my CDJ's I can line up two tracks within 10-15 seconds but I've been tearing my hair out a lot of times when it comes to my MK2's...

Posted by djkoolaide on Nov-25-2005 21:07:

quote:
Originally posted by Laszlo
SO THAT'S WHY I'M HAVING THE HUGE F-ING PROBLEMS BEATMATCHING WITH MY DECKS?! Sorry for caps lock but god damn have I struggled with getting the beatmatching spot on...with my CDJ's I can line up two tracks within 10-15 seconds but I've been tearing my hair out a lot of times when it comes to my MK2's...

That's probably it. Give this mod a try and see if you like it

Posted by Laszlo on Nov-25-2005 23:13:

quote:
Originally posted by djkoolaide
That's probably it. Give this mod a try and see if you like it

I most definitely will..but what good does it make if the clubs don't apply this modification? I'll still be fucked at places where the beatmatching really needs to be on top

Posted by ��|E on Nov-26-2005 03:43:

quote:
Originally posted by Laszlo
I most definitely will..but what good does it make if the clubs don't apply this modification? I'll still be fucked at places where the beatmatching really needs to be on top

Which is why im suggesting to my mate not to do it, i mean you get over it and i can beat match fast enough anyway. I was just curious as to someone that had done it. If you plan on doing it let us know how it goes

Cheers!

Posted by djkoolaide on Nov-26-2005 05:13:

Posted by SpecRadio on Dec-04-2005 07:33:

Ok...ive cut tp17 and the orange wire...turntable still works and everything and ive noticed it's easier to beatmatch already

And I already took the bearing out when I was messing with the fader

Posted by richg101 on Dec-05-2005 13:59:

anyone know if the vestax pdx d3 mk2 has this feature?

its got a quartz lock button like on the newer techs that resets the pitch to zero.

i remember it being a lot easier to mix on my belt drive soundlab dlp 1's than on my vestax.

say the track coming in is going slightly too quick.. if i touch the platter to correct... it ends up being even further off because its like the motor is trying to compensate and speeds up

i like to be hands on and not fiddle with the slider. some tecks seem to act like my vestax and others seem a lot easier to mix on.

any ideas?

Posted by altitude on Dec-05-2005 18:18:

guys guys guys! come on now! you aren't actually thinking about doing this are you?!

You paid good money for that quartz lock. Don't just rip it out.

If you dont want the pitch lock buy mk3s or mk5s

learn to mix with the quartz lock. its just a click. yes it is annoying, but you guys are djs, you NEED to learn to adapt to any situation. if you are thrown off by a quartz lock..

you are not a dj if you cant pull it off anywhere on any equipment, no matter how crap, much less worry about a small click on your pitch!

Posted by Tony Morello on Dec-06-2005 01:19:

quote:
Originally posted by altitude
guys guys guys! come on now! you aren't actually thinking about doing this are you?!

You paid good money for that quartz lock. Don't just rip it out.

If you dont want the pitch lock buy mk3s or mk5s

learn to mix with the quartz lock. its just a click. yes it is annoying, but you guys are djs, you NEED to learn to adapt to any situation. if you are thrown off by a quartz lock..

you are not a dj if you cant pull it off anywhere on any equipment, no matter how crap, much less worry about a small click on your pitch!

read the thread again... i'll wait...

so, after reading the thread you might notice they aren't talking about removing the pitch click, they're talking about modding their techs so the quartz lock feature that compensates for platter resistance isn't being used

so when they beatmatch, they can touch the platter and have it not speed up slightly when dragging your finger on the platter or have it slow down slightly when you speed up the platter
which is why we tell people to learn to ride the pitch

Posted by SpecRadio on Dec-06-2005 02:41:

Posted by altitude on Dec-06-2005 20:54:

quote:
Originally posted by Tony Morello

so, after reading the thread you might notice they aren't talking about removing the pitch click, they're talking about modding their techs so the quartz lock feature that compensates for platter resistance isn't being used

so when they beatmatch, they can touch the platter and have it not speed up slightly when dragging your finger on the platter or have it slow down slightly when you speed up the platter
which is why we tell people to learn to ride the pitch

AH! ok, I understand,
still, don't mod your techs, bad idea
you should not have to make adjustments that are so drastic that this should become a problem?

Posted by SpecRadio on Dec-07-2005 02:42:

quote:
Originally posted by altitude
AH! ok, I understand,
still, don't mod your techs, bad idea
you should not have to make adjustments that are so drastic that this should become a problem?

It's a simple little cut wire and a resistor you can solder back on even if you've had no soldering experiance ever. The gap where you cut it is SO tiny it's an easy fix.

Posted by Laszlo on Dec-07-2005 05:02:

Altitude is making a point for sure, and just what he mentions is the reason why I don't want to mod my techs...

when it comes to riding the pitch, I'm trying to adapt to it, but there is one huge issue which I'm having a problem with. I've experienced that already after a few hours behind the decks trying this new technique is way more accurate when it commes to getting the beats matched, instead of touching the platter - BUT, riding the pitch most often also gets the speeds of the two records matched up further from eachother. Unlike CD-players you don't know if your pitch is at 1.0 or 1.4%, you can only do an approximation, and let's say I've got a pair of records pretty cloe matched up (they run smoot for a few seconds)...as they start to slip apart I'm trying to correct them again, riding the pitch, and after I got the beats matched up for a split second and bring the pitch back to where it was, say 1.4% I instead brint it back to let's say 1.3%, and now the records aren't even matched as good as before. Do you get me? Does anybody have a solution for this?

Posted by SpecRadio on Dec-07-2005 11:55:

quote:
Originally posted by Laszlo
Altitude is making a point for sure, and just what he mentions is the reason why I don't want to mod my techs...

when it comes to riding the pitch, I'm trying to adapt to it, but there is one huge issue which I'm having a problem with. I've experienced that already after a few hours behind the decks trying this new technique is way more accurate when it commes to getting the beats matched, instead of touching the platter - BUT, riding the pitch most often also gets the speeds of the two records matched up further from eachother. Unlike CD-players you don't know if your pitch is at 1.0 or 1.4%, you can only do an approximation, and let's say I've got a pair of records pretty cloe matched up (they run smoot for a few seconds)...as they start to slip apart I'm trying to correct them again, riding the pitch, and after I got the beats matched up for a split second and bring the pitch back to where it was, say 1.4% I instead brint it back to let's say 1.3%, and now the records aren't even matched as good as before. Do you get me? Does anybody have a solution for this?

Yeah...I don't understand how to ride the pitch "accuratley" on turntables.

If it's fading off, you bring it up in speed quick, but you bring it down above the last one...it's still not accurate and you have to guesstimate where it's supposed to be.

Posted by Zild on Dec-07-2005 12:13:

quote:
Originally posted by Laszlo
Altitude is making a point for sure, and just what he mentions is the reason why I don't want to mod my techs...

when it comes to riding the pitch, I'm trying to adapt to it, but there is one huge issue which I'm having a problem with. I've experienced that already after a few hours behind the decks trying this new technique is way more accurate when it commes to getting the beats matched, instead of touching the platter - BUT, riding the pitch most often also gets the speeds of the two records matched up further from eachother. Unlike CD-players you don't know if your pitch is at 1.0 or 1.4%, you can only do an approximation, and let's say I've got a pair of records pretty cloe matched up (they run smoot for a few seconds)...as they start to slip apart I'm trying to correct them again, riding the pitch, and after I got the beats matched up for a split second and bring the pitch back to where it was, say 1.4% I instead brint it back to let's say 1.3%, and now the records aren't even matched as good as before. Do you get me? Does anybody have a solution for this?

More practice. Eventually you'll get your records matched up for more than a few seconds and when they do start to drift you only really push the pitch fader a few millimeters in the opposite direction, listen for the beats to come back into line and push it back a few millimeters. No need to look at the pitch fader or approximate what pitch you are at just use your ears because they work better than your eyes for beatmatching.