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Mitsubishi LT-30 restoration

crumbly said:
Sounds right.I have been reassembling the tone arm today and will hopefully refit it tomorrow. Fingers crossed.
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Fingers crossed over this side as well:thmbsp:.
FWIW I think the adjustment was originally to get the transfer done after the cueing was fully down, dunno why the CPU wouldn't just take it off the 'down' limiter switch.
 
Well that was it! seems to be all up and running now.After all the tonearm rebuilding I did it turned out the last thing was an adjustment.
Very relieved.Thanks for your mentoring as it concentrated my mind on the job.The person who started this job made a right mess of it with screws hanging out,reversed wiring and upside down sensors!Thank you
 
crumbly said:
Well that was it! seems to be all up and running now.After all the tonearm rebuilding I did it turned out the last thing was an adjustment.
Very relieved.Thanks for your mentoring as it concentrated my mind on the job.The person who started this job made a right mess of it with screws hanging out,reversed wiring and upside down sensors!Thank you
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:thmbsp::D:banana::music::banana::music::banana:
Please get back with your impressions.
 
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Hi.
My normally perfect LT-30 is broken, The tonearm upon returning laterally to above the tonearm rest simply stopped when the time came to lower onto the rest. Now nothing I do will budge the tonearm. Everything else seems in order. The tracking lights respond correctly should I shift the tonearm a bit left or right on its gimble but it does not respond to any of the cue/stop/start functions. The platter does roatate correctly when start is engaged. I cannot leave the switch in the off position as the tonearm is to high to allow the rotation of the switch to off.
Am I correct in assuming this is probably a slipped/broken belt(s)? The tonearm travels niether vertically nor horizontally
 
Thank you

Thank you for the quick reply. I ordered the belts before i made the post, Reading the thread had already made me want to change/inspect them.
Will post back with findings...
 
I have a ton of different belt sizes for different tape decks and TTs. Can anyone tell me what the correct sizes are for the lift and traverse belt of the LT-30? I really don't want to buy them if I already have them. The traverse looks the same as the LT-20, but the lift belt appears smaller.

EDIT: Neither belt is the same as the LT-20. The drive belt is larger, and the lift belt is smaller. FOund the post where the sizes are listed as SBS3.1 and SBS5.1. I used SBM5., and SBO3.2, work perfect. (I had a bag of assorted belts and found the 2 that were perfect, not too tight, not too loose, so but their cross sections are not SBS). After cleaning out the usual gooey belt residue, a total clean and lube, she works perfect. What a great solid TT! Totally silent in all operations, with a smoother advance. Definitely a keeper, just have to sand down and re-polish the dustcover. No cracks but some small rather deep gouges. HUGE footprint!
 
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Take the time to use the search function here. Certain this has been asked and answered in a couple of threads. One in particular is extremely helpful with pictures and nearly a step by step guide. Love my Lt-30's, 3 of them bad boys in the house.
 
Aerobat said:
Start with the service manual from vinyl engine. You'll need to remove the tonearm.
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You will need to remove the tonearm+carriage, the arm stays on the carriage.
This involves removing the platter and flipping the TT over and resting it all safely on cushioned spacings and removing the bottom and one of the glide rails. Download the manual and go back thru this thread.
 
This thread , along with the manual, has all the info you need to replace the belts, light bulbs tone arm wiring and generally to troubleshoot and get working your LT30. I just used it to get my LT30 running , an invaluable tool. Thanks to all who made it possible.
Andrew
 
Finally desided to tune, upgrade and get into order my LT-30. The TA rails and wheels will be cleaned and lubed, new bottom finally installed and the TA rewired with Cardas wire.

How long a new wire should be if I would like to shorten the signal path as was described here? One feet or two?
 
Make sure you post some pictures along the way. I have 3 of these tables and your original rebuild thread has provided me all the information I needed to get 2 of them running again. The 3rd was pristine when I got it and is still in the box. Does that make me a hoarder?
 
kotofei said:
Finally desided to tune, upgrade and get into order my LT-30. The TA rails and wheels will be cleaned and lubed, new bottom finally installed and the TA rewired with Cardas wire.

How long a new wire should be if I would like to shorten the signal path as was described here? One feet or two?
Click to expand...

You'll probably need two feet to have enough slack if you're doing the whole tonearm.
 
Will do. Legs and bottom, for example, have not been discussed or pictured here.


MRL_Audio said:
Make sure you post some pictures along the way. I have 3 of these tables and your original rebuild thread has provided me all the information I needed to get 2 of them running again. The 3rd was pristine when I got it and is still in the box. Does that make me a hoarder?
Click to expand...
 
My new LT-30 arm ticks

kotofei said:
Finally desided to tune, upgrade and get into order my LT-30. The TA rails and wheels will be cleaned and lubed]

I just got myself a very clean looking LT-30 from eBay on Saturday. I've been playing with it to be sure it works before installing my Dynavector Karat 17D3 cartridge.

I notice that the arm ticks a little just before the arm moves to correct tracking error when playing a record. It does this across most of the record surface until the last 1/2 inch or so, then it moves without ticking. There is also no ticking at all when using the cueing buttons to move the arm across the record, though the motion isn't perfectly smooth.

The arm rails look perfectly clean. Before doing any cleaning and/or lubrication I thought I should check here to see how it should be done. I looked at the service manual and it says nothing about cleaning or lubrication.

The ticking might also relate to some other issue. Does the arm servo work in both directions? Mine only seems to work in the forward direction. I was also wondering about the bulbs being up to spec.

I was inspired to buy the LT-30 by reading about it here at Audio Karma, and especially seeing that someone here was using the exact same cartridge. Often arms made for moving magnets are too light or resonant for the 17D3, but the Mitsubishi arm seems very acoustically dead (feels like a cylinder of marble) and reasonably massy. The whole table in fact is impressively non-resonant. This is way better than the midline Micro Seiki DD3x I bought in 1980 and sold shortly after.

FWIW the table was packed w/o using the transit plates. I hope there was no damage to wheels or gears, but I'd think that would have been more obvious. Except for the ticking (which looks like a slight sticking) everything seems to work perfectly.

I vaguely remember looking at a LT-30 in the mid 80's, and it also had the ticking problem, which was why I didn't buy it despite being otherwise favorably impressed. I hope it is fixable.

Charles Peterson
San Antonio, TX
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IIRC tracking correction is indeed bi-directional, failure to track backwards could be due to a light gate lamp in the carriage base being out. I have some pix of that assembly in this thread somewhere, the terminal pins should be heat-sinked when resoldering the lamp replacement as the plastic will melt.
The ticking could be anything from a loose tracking belt to sticky lube in the tracking mech' somewhere.
 
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