Short story: Platter spins with tonearm at rest, platter stops when tonearm is moved to play a record. Automatic functions do nothing. When dead cold (unplugged for a few days), turntable might work normally on occasion for a minute or two. Most of the time, platter begins spinning as soon as the turntable is powered on, platter stops when you attempt to move the tonearm. Tonearm moves freely otherwise.
Long story: I've had this SL-1600MK2 for many years, but was never able to get it working. Long story short, I bought it on ebay about 8 years ago for $20, advertised as working. Upon bringing it home, the turntable powered on but the motor didn't spin or do anything. I really wanted to get this thing working so I brought it to a repair shop, they replaced the cuing belt, and threw on a cheap stylus and charged me $75.
I got really excited, brought it home, and it played about a half a record.
The turntable works intermittently when cold, it would sometimes work for a few minutes. Otherwise, when the turntable powers on, the platter starts spinning. When you move the arm over the play a record the platter stops spinning. Basically a reverse operation. 99% of the time this is what happens. 1% of the time the turntable will work normally for a minute or two. When I brought it back to the repair shop, they told me the optical sensor was bad and I am out of luck as this is a discontinued part. They refunded me about $30 for the repair.
The turntable then stayed with me for another 3 moves and 8 years. Finally I got sick of looking at it, decided to get a second opinion. I found another reputable repair shop a little further from home that had many good reviews. This shop had the turntable for 3 months, and told me the arm control logical board is bad and I am also out of luck. When I got it back from them (paid them $50 for the diagnosis), they had the wrong mat on the turntable, which is a pretty big deal as their are 9 IR emitters in the platter. I realized this after getting it home. I've been at war with them about the mat, and they are saying they cannot find it.
I then opted to buy a used motor board with optical sensor off ebay, to see if that fixes the problem. Of course the connector on this optical sensor is loose, and who knows if it is even good, but when I installed the entire board assembly with optical sensor, the turntable exhibits the same operation, platter spins when powered on, stops spinning when the arm moves to play a record.
I am now about $175 into this turntable, and would really like to get it working. When I opened it up, I saw that the power wires going to the motor board were replaced at some point, and were simply just wrapped around the two posts on the motor board and not secured otherwise. How are these supposed to be secured? I have not tried to see if the polarity is correct on them yet.
Does anyone have any advise on these symptoms, platter spins with the arm at rest, platter stops when tonearm moves over a platter. When dead cold the turntable seems to work normally for a few minutes on occasion. Automatic functions seem to work.
Is my only option here to convert the turntable to full manual control? If so, what would it take to do that?
