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Frozen bearing on 'vintage' DD turntble

A good friend sent me an old Sony PS-X55 turntable, a machine I have a particular fondness for. He found it at a disreputable discount operation of some sort and I swear that poor thing must have been BAKED in the attic over a fertilizer plant. The platter would not turn except under hard mnual pressure. Under the hood, things looked OK but the motor was nearly totally frozen. I removed the motor and the attached circuit board carrying the drivers, handling with care.

The magnet assembly is press-fitted to the shaft and can't be taken apart to get at the bearing. Hmmmm... so I applied the same tactics I used on the twin Caterpillar diesels in my boat. I poured on a teacup of Liquid Wrench into it (actually the WD-40 brand, it doesn't eat plastic) and let it soak in for few days, adding some every day, and tapping it with a mallet (Very gently. Small mallet-- Seriously). After it started to turn, I chucked the spindle into my drill and spun it for a while, adding more Liquid Wrench until it was totally free and blew out the excess liquid.

The results are a pretty darn beautiful-sounding turntable. All that remained was polish the black marbelite base (Sony Bulk Molding Compound, to be precise) and the dustcover, both with Novus. The fully automatic, ultra-lightweight arm is actually quite a good match with a very high compliance cart (I'm running an ADC XLM Type II Improved). The rig is very quiet, maintains rock-solid PRAT, has a clear well-defined midrange-- maybe its a little woolly in the bass but not bad.


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Topic - Frozen bearing on 'vintage' DD turntble - mr.bear 01:44:15 02/2/17 (7)

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