Dual 506 Belt Replacement Frustration

[oldvinyldude]

I was gifted a Dual 506 belt drive turntable recently, and started the process of refurbishment. It's in decent shape. It was in frequent use decades ago, but had been sitting in a box for quite some time.

The table runs fine, but I wanted to get a better sense of the health of the belts. I searched and found a video of someone explaining how to remove the platter, for access. The table in the video was the same model, but mine is different than the one in the video. His had larger holes in the platter (revealed once the mat was removed). On his table, one could rotate the platter so that one of those holes was at the 9:00 position. Below the hole, there is a screw, and he could loosen it, and slide a lever outward, which would release the spindle, which allows it and the platter to be removed.

On mine, those platter holes were much smaller, and I could not access the screw. What I found was on mine, there was a rotating collar around the spindle, and one rotates this to unlock the platter, and it lifts up quite easily after that. That screw locked lever is still there, and it is used to unlock the "sub platter" for servicing of the spindle lubrication\bearings, etc.

I was getting pretty frustrated before I figured this out. I thought I would pass this along in case another member faced the same disparity of platter release mechanisms on the same model Dual 506.

The service manual was pretty useless in this instance.

In the two photos, one can see the release lever and it's screw (I have a small driver pointing to it.
The other photo shows the release collar removed, and the smaller holes in the platter, which prevented me from releasing anything.View attachment 2673527 View attachment 2673527 View attachment 2673528

Turns out too, that the belts are both in good shape-lol

 

[lini]

I was gifted a Dual 506 belt drive turntable recently (...)

Not really. I.e., you need to be aware, that there's a 506 and a 506-1 - but the badge on the chassis plate of the latter would still only say 506, so that it's pretty easy to confuse these two.

Well, and the 506 still belongs to the 1st ULM generation and still sports the older, 8-pole SM860 motor - so drive-wise one might as well regard it as a ULMified 504 (with additional strobe light). Whereas the newer 506-1 belongs to the second ULM generation and sports the 16-pole SM100-1 motor, so it could just as well be regarded as a 505 with additional strobe light. And in fact the 505 and 506-1 even share the same service manual. That manual (or at least the version, that can be found over on VE) is rather meagre, though - hence I'd suggest you to additionally download the service manual for the 505-1.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini