Linn Akito sticky tonearm bearing fixed, procedure in 9 steps

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Folks,
I did fix a friend's 10yrs. old Linn Akito, which had sticky horizontal bearings, a quite common problem to Linn Akito and Ekos models. While I would not dare to do it on an Ekos, with a 10yrs old Akito there is nothing to lose. It took me 3 hours to do it. Main concern was to mess with the cabling not more than necessary.
I thought some folks might be interested how I did it.
Procedure in steps:
1.) unscrew the the screw holding the phono clip terminal at the headshell, and carefully pull it out. Unsolder the four leads to that terminal - solder a 2 ft. long, new flexible cable at the end of one of unsoldered internal wirings. Unsolder the earth clip at the end of the black internal wire, too.
Mark the colors and the positions of the colors of the internal wiring relative to the terminal, on a sheet of paper. Collect the transparent isolation pieces sitting on the soldering points at the back of the terminal.
The drawback is: when you want to unmount the DIN phono plug, you must rewire the tonearm, just because the internal cables are way too short to resolder again. So you *must* use the old cable to bring in a *fishing wire* into the arm tube and through the horizontal bearing, thus you can pull the new internal wire set into the arm.
If the original cables would be just 10mm or one 3rd of an inch longer, one could rewire the old cablings.
2.) unscrew the phono plug terminal and also the aluminium colored holder which is glued to it, there are two screws, you need matching hex keys to do it.
3.) pull the phono terminal with the cables until the fishing wire appears app. 1inch or 2.5cm through the hole in the horizontal bearing. Cut the old wire from the fishing wire. The length of the fishing wire is necessary to be gripped at, later.
You need a small tool to grip that end, later.
Fix the other end of the fishing wire at the headshell, that you cannot pull it inside the wand, by accident.
4.) unscrew the plate below the antiscating/arm rest bar. You have to use one philips screw driver. Use a matching screw driver only, otherwise you ruin the screw.
This necessary, because then you have the way free to spray cleaning alcohol into the upper part of the horizontal bearing.
5.) use a wrench key (7 or 8mm, do not remember exactly) to unlock the horizontal bearing, until you can feel play. It should be a long hollow key, long enough, that the piece of fishing wire has place inside.
use lots of alcohol spray (like TUNER 600, used for cleaning tuners, it disappears totally into the air and leaves no dirt or mud) and clean the thing.
6.) lock the hollow central until just no play is there.
7.) Install new wiring, starting at unsoldering the old internal wires from the phono plug, then soldering a new set of internal wires (the cables of your choice, maybe solid core, maybe silver litz, maybe Cardasz ...) at that phono plug. Solder the free ends of the new wires to the small end fishing wire. (The fishing wire is long enough that you can pull it out of the horizontal bearing to solder at it. Remember to fix the other end again at the headshell ... OK. Then pull carefully the fishing wire at the headshell end until the new internal wires come out and the phono plug unit comes into its old position. Lock the phono plug unit.
8.) (Alternative 1) Now you have 5 internal wires at the headshell end. You can mount it like before, cut it 2cms or 1inch lenght left from the hole, put the transparent isolation plastic pieces on the wires, then resoldering the earth clip and the cartridge clip terminal. Push gently the isolation pieces on the soldering points. Then move gently the terminal back to its original position and lock the screw. Phew ! Finished !
(Alternative 2) you can save some bad contacts and additional cartridge clip cable, if you mount directly cartridge clips to the internal wires (except the earth wire). Then you should leave 2 inch / 5cms of cables coming out of the wand. The earth wire should be attached to the screw. Put a bit of damping cloth inside to prevent the cables from moving too much.
Hope somebody finds it useful.
PS: I once readjusted another Akito's vertical bearings, too, but that is another story.
Regards,
Hartmut from Munich, tonearm afficionado.

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Topic - Linn Akito sticky tonearm bearing fixed, procedure in 9 steps - hifidaddy 06:09:43 01/23/01 (0)

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