Scott Powers
New Member
Hello Folks,
First time posting here, I looked around but didn't see another post that answered my question so presenting this to the group. Picked up a nice Magnovox console last week with a Micromatic W620 turntable. Like most people's experience when buying vintage equipment the turntable would not move. I pulled the tt, cleaned and applied new white lithium grease to the unit. I put it back in the console and Jackpot it works!! The problem is on cold starts, first record of the day, it sounds very warbled. After playing for approximately 21/2 minutes it was all good and sounded fine. I continued to read what might be wrong and discovered that the idler wheel should have been re-lubed with a lighter oil instead of the lithium grease. I pulled the platter and took the idler wheel off, cleaned it again and this time added sewing machine oil. On cold start it still sounds warbled but instead of the 21/2 minutes it was now clear and sounding good after playing for 30-45 seconds. So an improvement. I investigated further and also discovered I had put the packed bearing under the platter upside down, so I flipped that and added a few drops of the lighter oil on the spindle and put the platter back on. So this morning I put on a LP hoping to have solved the slow cold start problem.... nope, it is still warbled and not at a constant speed for the same 30-45 second warm up. Not sure where to look at not. It seems to be that it has something to do with lubrication and the need to run a bit to get warmed up... I'm just not sure if I under/over lubricated or used the wrong stuff. Hoping the collective knowledge of the group can solve this for me. Thank you all.
First time posting here, I looked around but didn't see another post that answered my question so presenting this to the group. Picked up a nice Magnovox console last week with a Micromatic W620 turntable. Like most people's experience when buying vintage equipment the turntable would not move. I pulled the tt, cleaned and applied new white lithium grease to the unit. I put it back in the console and Jackpot it works!! The problem is on cold starts, first record of the day, it sounds very warbled. After playing for approximately 21/2 minutes it was all good and sounded fine. I continued to read what might be wrong and discovered that the idler wheel should have been re-lubed with a lighter oil instead of the lithium grease. I pulled the platter and took the idler wheel off, cleaned it again and this time added sewing machine oil. On cold start it still sounds warbled but instead of the 21/2 minutes it was now clear and sounding good after playing for 30-45 seconds. So an improvement. I investigated further and also discovered I had put the packed bearing under the platter upside down, so I flipped that and added a few drops of the lighter oil on the spindle and put the platter back on. So this morning I put on a LP hoping to have solved the slow cold start problem.... nope, it is still warbled and not at a constant speed for the same 30-45 second warm up. Not sure where to look at not. It seems to be that it has something to do with lubrication and the need to run a bit to get warmed up... I'm just not sure if I under/over lubricated or used the wrong stuff. Hoping the collective knowledge of the group can solve this for me. Thank you all.
