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Magnavox s600 platter wobble

J

jakethegreat

New Member
Hi everyone!
Got a Magnavox console with a S600 turntable. When putting a record on it skips within the track, and seems to do so at similar spots on the platter revolution if that makes sense. Did a bunch of investigating and it appears to be as though the platter to spindle fit is loose and allows the platter to rock back and forth as it spins, lifting the platter up and down causing the needle to bounce.

I did some disassembly and the bearing below the bracket that holds the platter seems to be in good shape, well oiled and seems fine. The bracket to spindle fit seems loose to me, but wondering how packed with grease it should be. There was some light oil applied by the prior owner, but there looks to be a recess in the shaft diameter that I think should have lithium grease packed in to keep the platter centered.

Any advice is appreciated. The platter appears to be turning at a constant rate and motor sounds normal to me.

Thank you!
 
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If you PM me I can send the service manual. These things should spin for minutes after the power is turned off if assembled and lubed correctly.
 
Update: it spins fine, or seems to in my eyes. My dad has a much newer record player when I was younger so I'm not unfamiliar with records but haven't really used one in at least ten years.

I disassembled again last night and I'm only missing one of the washers in the diagram above, I think a rubber one above the bearing. Still there was one consistent high spot, maybe an eight to a quarter inch, when it turned. I added a paper shim between the bracket and the platter (they are shown assembled in post above) and that seemed to address it enough for most of the records I have to play with no issue. It's still not really right in my opinion. I'm not quite sure how to fully square the bracket to the platter without some sort of specialty tooling. Might just be a long game of guess and check.

Going to replace the needle next.
 
Mine has, starting from the bottom 1) the ring with 2 bumps on each side (patented to reduce wobble) 2) thrust washer and 3) caged bearing. It could use a cleaning and oiling but spins silently.
20260109_102047.jpg
 
5790.jpg

As I took it apart was left bottom to right top. I put the rubber side down on the washer with the dents and the steel one one top. I don't think it made a difference TBH.
 
Here's mine in all its glory. Ceramic cartridge, 1964 output transistors (ugh), recapped and also the coupling caps changed from ceramic to poly. If I was on a desert island with 120v power I guess I could live with it.

 
Im way too new at this to understand all that.

You upgraded the cartridge to poly?

What is a coupling cap?

If I had my way, I would just yank the old player and put a new one in to the console. But, alas the better half likes the old timey charm.
 
jakethegreat said:
Im way too new at this to understand all that.

You upgraded the cartridge to poly?

What is a coupling cap?

If I had my way, I would just yank the old player and put a new one in to the console. But, alas the better half likes the old timey charm.
Click to expand...
The cartridge is the original ceramic. I usually convert the old consoles to use modern magnetic cartridges, but this one works well so I left it as is.

Here's one with an SL-5 turntable with a mono adapter into an ART phono preamp then into the aux input of a 1956 mono console.

20260110_122438.jpg
 
Very nice. My console has Bluetooth into the aux connection, which is nice. Would be very easy to do a swap like this I think.

Still have a bit of a wobble. First couple tracks on some records skip ahead, inner tracks seem to work fine.
 
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