Phillips Direct Drive Turntable Help

TheCrunge

Active Member
I know this is a shot in the dark but I have an older Phillips 777 direct drive table that is in need of some help. It was in great shape prior to last Thursday, at which point after Side A of the Cars Greatest Hits, the play and stop buttons won't work. To make this worse, even though when spinning, no noise will come from the unit.

This really annoys me because it had been working great and my dad has owned it since new. Just wondering if anyone knew anything I should be looking at. I am a mechanical engineer so I am more than marginally mechanical, but upon taking this sucker apart, there are so many spring related mechanisms I can't figure out what isn't working (every spring is tight and seems to be where it should be). If anyone has had one of these with a similar problem or if anyone can just give me some advice, I would appreciate it.
 
"Direct Control" not Direct Drive. Philips' little marketing twist -- they were diehard belt drive mfgrs (as were most European tt makers), but the market tide had turned against 'em by the late 1970s.

It will need a new belt.

I don't know about the mechanical linkage in that tt, but that's probably where the trouble lies.

There's probably a mute switch tied to the cue lever that is responsible for the "no noise" (if by this you mean "no sound"?).

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Unfortunately Vinyl Engine doesn't appear to have the service manual for the AF-777 online, but I'll give you their link anyway:
http://www.vinylengine.com/library/philips.shtml
 
I did mean no sound by that. I can hear the signal from the stylus, but it is not making its way to the preamp. I guess I will have to play with a bit more tomorrow.

I really want to get this working again, because it sounds great and plus I have had no luck finding any decent turntables in Northern NJ for reasonable prices (SA, CL, and Ebay so far).
 
I did mean no sound by that. I can hear the signal from the stylus, but it is not making its way to the preamp.

Exactly. As mentioned before, check for a switch in the cueing mechanism. Turntables of this period were fond of including a muting circuitry, interrupting the signal until after stylus touch-down, to eliminate the 'ka-THUD'. The problem could be there. It also could be anywhere in the chain of signal between the stylus and your pre-amp.

Or maybe it's The Cars. Bastards.
 
I need to spend some time tracking the mechanical paths of all the damn levers in the thing. If I can't get it to work by the weekend, it might be time to try to find a new table during some of the thrifting that will hopefully be happening Saturday. Although I am not that optimistic.
 
So I seem to have gotten this to work for now. There is a gear seems to be in charge of resetting the start stop mechanism. It appears to be missing a few teeth, but that still doesn't seem to be the problem. The stop button still doesn't work that well, but if I really need to stop things, I can jam it down or pressing the play button seems to reset it pretty well. Hopefully this will last for a while.

Back to the listening. Now to get some more albums this weekend.
 
I will always be on the lookout for another TT. Especially now that I have a friend who wants to get into vinyl too.
 
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