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BackBeat54 asked me to rewire an arm or two for him. I know him as the Beatles album guru of the asylum. The great thing about the asylum is meeting new friends. As I have been working through the project I have got to know John as a friend. This doubles the enjoyment of a project.
He sent me three Technics tonearms. One from an SL 1600MK2, one from an SL 1800MK2 and one for an SL3Q. Upon arrival I was confident I could build him two working Technics tonearms.
However as I disassembled the critters I found a great deal of concealed damage. So far I have only been able to resurrect one arm of the three. With just a couple more parts I will get two working.
Our goal was to rewire with Cardas 33awg tonearm wire. I buy this from Michael Percy Audio. He has the colors necessary for the job. He also sells the shielded bundled wire but I do not care for the extra mass inside the tonearm. I am sure it would be great from the tonearm base back to the RCA inputs of the phono section.
Picture one shows the concealed damage to the horizontal main bearing. John bought these tables or tonearms used. It looks like someone tried to twist the arm out of the bearing assembly. It could be that the table was falling and someone grabbedthe table by the arm. Otherwise it hit something that really massacred this bearing.
These bearings are shot and might be the worse bearing damage I have ever seen on a tonearm.
Picture two shows the broken nylon arm lift piece. On the left is the original assembly. You can see where the black plastic shaft has broken off at the end. The one on right is a replacement that John bought. These are under 20.00 dollars US. The arm lift now works perfectly.
Picture three shows perhaps the hardest part of the rewire job. I had to dissassemble the entire assembly to get this done easily. I wanted to see the guts of the arm first hand so dissassembly was not an issue for me. If you build a rig, you can rewire this easily with little if any dissassembly.
You will notice that I twisted the wire pairs to help reject RF contamination. The wires are a bit looser than I like. Next time I will use something to hold them in a tight 45 degree configuration as Tesla recommends.
As long as John is not next to a radio station he should be good to go.
To describe what you see in the actual picture, the two screws on the left hold the tonearm lift dampening device. That is the brass can to the left.
The brass plate to the upper right side is the locking mechanism. Once you have the VTA adjusted you simply twist a locking lever and the arm is rigidly coupled. Another fantastic design in my line of thinking.
Picture four shows the best way to rid the insulation for the rewire. Garth posted about this and the technique works perfectly. Basically, you hold the wire with tweezers or a needle nose plier set and touch the end with a hot soldering iron. The insulation will retract away from the heat and will stop receding when it reaches the tips. These act as a heat sink. You will get perfect wire every time.
I like to tin these wires. Use some acid flux to clean the copper and then tin it. I run my soldering iron really hot for these projects--550 centigrade to be exact. I want instant pooling without the chance that heat will deform the pieces.
This final picture shows the stock tonearm wire PCB. These are all the original stock wires you see in this picture. The tonearm arm wire wraps around to provide stress relief and is soldered to the board. Look at the big solder pools they left here.
I do not like to see this much solder on a joint so I will clean this up a little on the rewire.
Rewiring these arms is not difficult or expensive. The Cardas rewire was the best and most pronounced improvement I made to my SL1210MKV.
KAB sells a rewire service for these arms and it is very affordable.
For those of you with tube gear, I would recommend using A-MSystems pure silver, teflon coated 36awg wire. It sounds superb and costs just a fraction of the higher priced silver tonearm wires on the market.
More pictures will follow.
Follow Ups:
do you know where can I get smaller wire than 33awg ? cardas quality or better .
I'm reengineering the sumiko "The arm" and the holes for inserting the arm wires is so small that I don't think the 33awg tonearm wire can do the job .
Thanks
LT
The A-MSystems silver wire is superb. 4 nines pure. It is double ground and annealed. It takes zero break in time. Sounds great right off.
The 36awg is what you probably need. The bare wire size is 0.03" so treat this wire like it will break just looking in its direction.
I stopped using it because the clips would break routinely. There just is not enough metal for constantly changing things.
I would use in in a captured system like the Technics any time. There is no stress when you are dealing with removeable bayonet type headshells.
Hi Tube.
can you help me to buy some of these wires ? I'm in Australia and i don't know how to buy from them.
I will pay for everthings .
Thanks
LT
I am certain they can ship without issue to Australia. Email them and let me know.
I am happy to help if they cannot make a smooth arrangement for delivery. They will custom cut the wire. I often order 50ft or 100ft as a continuous run.
Cheers!
For anyone who, like me, has found the ordering system at MPA slow at best, and non-existent at worst, another retail choice is Sonic Craft. They carry a wide variety of products (including the Cardas chassis and tonearm litz wire) and the service is fast and friendly, with a no-rush, your fifteen-dollar-order-is-important-to-us-how-can-we-help-you tone. They use a 1-800 number that has never failed to be immediately answered (in my case, anyway). If they're busy talking to someone else, they'll take your number and call you right back (and they actually do it!)
As an aside, I'm a big fan of the very moderately priced Sonicap Gen 1 film caps that they carry. Huge bang-for-buck.
No affiliation, just a plug for a company that seems to appreciate even my modest amount of business.
Cardas DIN = $69.95
Turret = $39.95
I don`t care much about music.
What I like is sounds. ~ Dizzy Gillespie
You are most correct !!
Use terminals, NOT EVER P.C. board traces. Terminals are MUCH better than putting that lowest level signal through one inch of a P.C. board trace. One "loses" the signal, right with the PC trace, as far as its intactness and integrity. (I use a Radio Shack terminal strip, and always solder my tonearm wires directly to the phono leadout wires.)
He should have used Wonder Solder on the connections, flows better, sounds better. He could rewire the leadouts on the PC board directly to the other wires, eliminating the PC traces, but he needs to use better solder, really and truly, only the Wonder Solder Percy sells.
Jeff Medwin
I like a continuous run without extra connections.
I use Wondersolder on all my projects.
I think John plans to sell this arm on an extra turntable. I offered to run it continuous for any table he plans to keep.
Actually I find the double connectors and double solder joints on a DIN to sound just as bad, perhaps worse than the PCB boards.
I gather you are a point to point guy! That is the purest way to fly.
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