oldoverholt
New Member
Hey all! Long-time reader, haven't posted here in probably ten years...but have gotten a bit back into the vintage audio game recently and have been paying some much-needed attention to my Technics SL-1500.
For a long time the speed/on/off switch has been *very* finicky and you'd have to kind of wiggle it around to get a consistent or correct speed. I'd sprayed it with deoxit in the past but never really gave it a deep clean until this past week, which has helped immensely! When I took the switch apart it was covered in gunk so I gave it a good couple sprays of deoxit and wiped it down with a q-tip. Good as new!
The turntable was also speeding up or slowing down in the middle of playing a record every so often, so I figured I'd take a look at the circuit board while I had it open. I found that the C2 capacitor was blown and one of the leads wasn't even soldered onto the board anymore. The big C1 capacitor looked like it had a little bulge to it too so I figured I'd replace both of them. I put C1 on backwards the first time (doh) so I had to desolder and resolder it. I was a little worried about burning the circuit board too much and breaking it, but things turned out fine. I'd like to work up my confidence a bit and do a full recap, but this is my main (and only) turntable right now so I wanted to be a little cautious with it .
The service manual from VinylEngine was a huge help with this too! The first time I put it back together I forgot to reconnect the motor to the circuit board and got really scared I broke things beyond repair. Luckily that was an easy fix lol.
For a long time the speed/on/off switch has been *very* finicky and you'd have to kind of wiggle it around to get a consistent or correct speed. I'd sprayed it with deoxit in the past but never really gave it a deep clean until this past week, which has helped immensely! When I took the switch apart it was covered in gunk so I gave it a good couple sprays of deoxit and wiped it down with a q-tip. Good as new!
The turntable was also speeding up or slowing down in the middle of playing a record every so often, so I figured I'd take a look at the circuit board while I had it open. I found that the C2 capacitor was blown and one of the leads wasn't even soldered onto the board anymore. The big C1 capacitor looked like it had a little bulge to it too so I figured I'd replace both of them. I put C1 on backwards the first time (doh) so I had to desolder and resolder it. I was a little worried about burning the circuit board too much and breaking it, but things turned out fine. I'd like to work up my confidence a bit and do a full recap, but this is my main (and only) turntable right now so I wanted to be a little cautious with it .
The service manual from VinylEngine was a huge help with this too! The first time I put it back together I forgot to reconnect the motor to the circuit board and got really scared I broke things beyond repair. Luckily that was an easy fix lol.