2016-06 Dual 1214 turntable restoration.

I want a better 78 player and found this turntable in a 3-N-1 stereo for $10. At that price it didn't matter if it was a no go. Looks like there had been some water damage and some missing bits but not too bad.
The motor did not spin freely which was a very bad sign so I worked on that first. The bottom of that armature was locked into the brass ball that acts as a bearing and guide. It was riveted into a support bracket that I destroyed before I realized I could possibly have disassembled it on account of one of the parts being so frozen I thought the two parts one.

(a bad first attempt that involved dental floss).

Hacked up a replacement bracket from a tip-top ice-cream lid and that worked really well .
Reassembled and the motor ran reliably and quietly but the speed selection, disk size and return were all faulty.

A good clean section by section, some small adjustments and I got all these working.
 
 Gave it a run (after using a magnifying glass and tweezers to straighten the stylus) and it sounded great. I had no suspicion that 78s could sound so good.
And I found the auto-change spindle lying inside the electronics in the case in the old 3 in 1 guts and that seems to work too.

2016-05 Speaker Stands

I've been keeping an eye out for something to use for speaker stands or a good design to build from scratch. I found these slightly odd stools.

They looked like this

Here they are stripped down

I reclaimed the wood from the seats, trimmed it to fit the width of the frames and added some stick n cable clips for the speaker wires.

These speakers have no internal cross overs and I have these that I use with them. Why not mount them on the back of the stands to keep them tidy too?

Like this

 ! For The finished !

(I really don't like blogger's lay-out tools / editor.)

2016-04 Empty the LP Queue

I have about 4 to 5 hundred LPs waiting to be listened to or just to be shelved.
It's getting to me. This month I want to review and shelve them all.
I started a bit late and set 8/day as a goal. Had a cold and took a break then came back reinvigorated and decided on 10/day and 20/day in the weekend.
Then the Rotary Book fair happened and I added 25ish to the Queue. Now I've set myself 15/day and 30/day in the weekend. I might make it.
Here's my progress chart that I keep to enthuse myself:

It went well enough. I've kept on top of things too now that I have better organised shelves with some free space. Next to do are the 45s.