Never mind, I wasn't getting any help anyways here. I found the culprit. Upon cleaning the thing up I discovered the 45 adapter had fallen into the area where the arm travels across. Thanks for the no help though.
Not many folks here have experience with that particular turntable. I got one (or something similar) several years ago out of the blue, gave it to my brother, and he hasn't done anything with it. The closest thing I have to it otherwise is an RCA MTT-230, part of their ill-fated "
Dimensia" (yes, I spelled it correctly) line. Otherwise, I have an
ADC Accutrac 4000 which can also detect tracks, albeit using a conventional-type tonearm:
Anyway, strange problems like this can be a difficult thing to diagnose even for experts. I had a similar thing happen to my
Bang & Olufsen Beogram 8000 linear-tracking turntable. During testing phases, I found that the arm carriage would 'scan' the platter only as far as about the 7" position, then get stuck, as seen below. I thought there might be a switch or something else inside the unit associated with the 7" record size which the arm carriage was getting hung up on, but members of a B&O-specific forum told me that there was none, that its detection of record size (not track gaps, sadly) was purely electronic/optical. I looked down inside where the arm carriage travels, and discovered a cartridge/stylus guard had fallen inside the works, coincidentally around the 7" position. Removed it, and the arm carriage traveled normally.
-Adam
