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Official AR Turntable Owners Thread

gregj said:
Hi. Welcome to AK. There are no dumb questions here. I've learned a lot about the AR XB from this forum so I will share some of what I know to try and answer your questions. I'm sure there are others more knowledgeable than me who will also chime in. You've got a great turntable that's light years above modern starter units. It will be worth your time and effort to restore it. I recently pulled mine out of storage and it is playing again with a little maintenance.

1) Hard to tell from your photo if the stylus is bent. It looks a little off center. Is it bent up toward the camera or is the cantilever straight? If you have a jewelers loop or other magnifier you can inspect the stylus tip for wear or damage.
2) "Movement of subplatter"--By this do you me the t-shaped undercarriage that is mounted with 3 springs. It is supposed to move because it is suspended by the springs. The platter mounts to this and the whole assembly is isolated by the springs from motor vibration. That's one of the cool design features that makes this TT so quiet. You may need to replace the foam inside the springs then re-adjust the tension on the springs.
3) "the gunk on the top of the sub-patter that the thrust plate"--Looks like your referring to the foam washer around the opening to the spindle bearing well. I just removed the foam that was loose. You should also re-oil the spindle bearing well and spindle shaft. There is a thread here that shows how.
4) The belt residue on the pulley can be cleaned off with a Q-tip and isopropyl alcohol. You're correct that a new belt would help.
4) The "lock" looks like it is the base part of an aftermarket device called the Dust Bug. There was an arm that attached to the base and it collected dust from the record surface. This device and the lock base part are not related to the turntable's performance.

There are also some great threads on restoring the AR here on AK. Do a search for these threads and you'll learn more like I did. Good luck and keep asking questions if you get stuck. AK members are very user-friendly :thumbsup::music::beerchug:

GREG
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Hi Greg, thank you so much for your reply! I'm glad I've joined the right forum as, like you say, AK seems very user-friendly and well documented. I'll do some digging through AR threads shortly.

Regarding the cantilever* (not stylus, that's my bad) its moreso bent to the right. I've attached a few other photos, sorry if they're not the best quality! Good to know about the sub platter, that's a really unique design. My next tasks will be to clean up that foam washer, re-oil the spindle, clean the pulley and order a new belt. Definitely missing the other half of the dust bug but glad I know where that part originated from!

Thanks again for answering all of my questions and putting my mind at ease. I really appreciate it and happy to be a part of the forum!
 

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Hello Trasky!
Welcome to AK and congrats on the XB!
As gregj said this is a good place to get information and good to do as much research as possible to get an idea of what can be done.
I'll throw out a few more comments and I am sure you will get more from the good folks found here. The best unfortunately is no longer with us, R.I.P. my good friend Marc Morin but his comments and feedback can be found throughout the AR forum and also in discussions of the Grado cartridges. There are some wonderful people here!
That black foam around the spindle well, you'll want to get all that cleaned off the edge and also clean out the well too. That black crud used to be soft but it has hardened and can scratch the shaft, wall and spindle bearing. It is possible to polish that bearing to a mirror finish and add a cross hatch to the spindle shaft and wall.
Check the condition of the Delrin thrust plate, the small white plastic looking disc at the bottom of the well, if worn or has a pit in the middle it can be flipped over or replaced. There is also one in the tone arm well. Try creating suction using a straw to lift that thrust plate out. Or if really stuck can use the red can Brakleen. Do this in the garage, it is a spray can but you can get some into the well and let it sit for a few days if necessary. Eventually the thrust plate will float up. Avoid using anything metal with sharp point as you might damage the side wall.
The motor, remove the belt, put a drop of oil on the shaft and let it run for a while. The spinning and oil on the shaft will lift any dirt from the motor up to the surface, use a Q-tip to clean that oil up. If it is dark that means dirt is lifting up. Keep doing that even to the point of letting it spin overnight.
I'm sure others will give feedback on the cartridge but in my estimation it is a very good one well worth getting it fixed. I have an F-8 on a KD-550 and an F-9 on my ES-1. Sounds wonderful!
Reach out to me if you need a belt, I do have some new ones, also Delrin thrust plates.
If it starts up slow when you turn it on it is not uncommon to manually give the platter a nudge to help it get started
Leave the bottom cover off.
Again welcome to us!
 
Hose53 said:
Hello Trasky!
Welcome to AK and congrats on the XB!
As gregj said this is a good place to get information and good to do as much research as possible to get an idea of what can be done.
I'll throw out a few more comments and I am sure you will get more from the good folks found here. The best unfortunately is no longer with us, R.I.P. my good friend Marc Morin but his comments and feedback can be found throughout the AR forum and also in discussions of the Grado cartridges. There are some wonderful people here!
That black foam around the spindle well, you'll want to get all that cleaned off the edge and also clean out the well too. That black crud used to be soft but it has hardened and can scratch the shaft, wall and spindle bearing. It is possible to polish that bearing to a mirror finish and add a cross hatch to the spindle shaft and wall.
Check the condition of the Delrin thrust plate, the small white plastic looking disc at the bottom of the well, if worn or has a pit in the middle it can be flipped over or replaced. There is also one in the tone arm well. Try creating suction using a straw to lift that thrust plate out. Or if really stuck can use the red can Brakleen. Do this in the garage, it is a spray can but you can get some into the well and let it sit for a few days if necessary. Eventually the thrust plate will float up. Avoid using anything metal with sharp point as you might damage the side wall.
The motor, remove the belt, put a drop of oil on the shaft and let it run for a while. The spinning and oil on the shaft will lift any dirt from the motor up to the surface, use a Q-tip to clean that oil up. If it is dark that means dirt is lifting up. Keep doing that even to the point of letting it spin overnight.
I'm sure others will give feedback on the cartridge but in my estimation it is a very good one well worth getting it fixed. I have an F-8 on a KD-550 and an F-9 on my ES-1. Sounds wonderful!
Reach out to me if you need a belt, I do have some new ones, also Delrin thrust plates.
If it starts up slow when you turn it on it is not uncommon to manually give the platter a nudge to help it get started
Leave the bottom cover off.
Again welcome to us!
Click to expand...
Hello Hose,
Thanks for your reply! I can see you're quite active & helpful in this community so its great to hear from you. I'm very sorry to hear of the passing of Marc, reading through this thread I definitely get the sense of how important he was to the community, and how much he contributed.
Thank you for all your advice as well - it sounds like I'll be able to keep busy with this thing over the weekend! In regards to the belt, I live in New Zealand so I understand if that's too far to have one shipped. I will be after one regardless if you don't mind/know of any other places that may have them :)
Really happy I stumbled upon this forum. I'll report back if I have any further questions/progress!
 
Hose53 said:
Hello Trasky!
Welcome to AK and congrats on the XB!
As gregj said this is a good place to get information and good to do as much research as possible to get an idea of what can be done.
I'll throw out a few more comments and I am sure you will get more from the good folks found here. The best unfortunately is no longer with us, R.I.P. my good friend Marc Morin but his comments and feedback can be found throughout the AR forum and also in discussions of the Grado cartridges. There are some wonderful people here!
That black foam around the spindle well, you'll want to get all that cleaned off the edge and also clean out the well too. That black crud used to be soft but it has hardened and can scratch the shaft, wall and spindle bearing. It is possible to polish that bearing to a mirror finish and add a cross hatch to the spindle shaft and wall.
Check the condition of the Delrin thrust plate, the small white plastic looking disc at the bottom of the well, if worn or has a pit in the middle it can be flipped over or replaced. There is also one in the tone arm well. Try creating suction using a straw to lift that thrust plate out. Or if really stuck can use the red can Brakleen. Do this in the garage, it is a spray can but you can get some into the well and let it sit for a few days if necessary. Eventually the thrust plate will float up. Avoid using anything metal with sharp point as you might damage the side wall.
The motor, remove the belt, put a drop of oil on the shaft and let it run for a while. The spinning and oil on the shaft will lift any dirt from the motor up to the surface, use a Q-tip to clean that oil up. If it is dark that means dirt is lifting up. Keep doing that even to the point of letting it spin overnight.
I'm sure others will give feedback on the cartridge but in my estimation it is a very good one well worth getting it fixed. I have an F-8 on a KD-550 and an F-9 on my ES-1. Sounds wonderful!
Reach out to me if you need a belt, I do have some new ones, also Delrin thrust plates.
If it starts up slow when you turn it on it is not uncommon to manually give the platter a nudge to help it get started
Leave the bottom cover off.
Again welcome to us!
Click to expand...

I am relubing my modded AR-XB and have removed the two Delrin thrust plates and the arm ball bearing. Before putting everything back together, are there any better ball bearings out there I can swap out for the steel one? Ceramic, Zirconia, Ruby?

Edit: I see people use this sapphire or a ceramic from Pats Audio. Does either of these improve over the steel or are people using them because of worn or lost ball bearings?
 
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My uneducated opinion would be to stay with the one you have. I have an XA, XB and ES-1, all modded by Marc and using the steel ball bearings.
Would be interesting to see feedback from others regarding any advantage of one over the other that would make a significant difference.
 
Hose53 said:
My uneducated opinion would be to stay with the one you have. I have an XA, XB and ES-1, all modded by Marc and using the steel ball bearings.
Would be interesting to see feedback from others regarding any advantage of one over the other that would make a significant difference.
Click to expand...
I have the sapphire ball in the arm well but aside from the audiophile tendency to believe it was magical, I cant honestly say it made a difference. One thing that helped was switching to a heavier oil there to add some damping. I’m using a thicker black moly there, similar to Linn oil.
 
I replaced a lost ball in an AR table with one of tungsten carbide, mostly because it was what was available in the right size at the time. It's worked fine for years. But I wouldn't have done it if the original had been there.
 
Blackdog61 said:
I have the sapphire ball in the arm well but aside from the audiophile tendency to believe it was magical, I cant honestly say it made a difference. One thing that helped was switching to a heavier oil there to add some damping. I’m using a thicker black moly there, similar to Linn oil.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I am going to try some high quality ISO 46 compressor oil in the main bearing and ISO 100 in the arm well.
 
I think Marc's preference was a full synthetic oil along the line of Mobile 1 Full Synthetic x/30, like 5w/30, I think he used a purple power.
For both tone arm and spindle
 
Hose53 said:
I think Marc's preference was a full synthetic oil along the line of Mobile 1 Full Synthetic x/30, like 5w/30, I think he used a purple power.
For both tone arm and spindle
Click to expand...

I've read some of his posts recommending 20w since AR supplied a small tube of Shell 20w with their tables,
 
Sorry for all the questions but now that I got my table disassembled, I thought I should address the pulley. I have some blue tac in there now, which was always a short-term damping solution. I found this quote from Marc and don't know exactly what he means:

marcmorin said:
adding mass, and keeping it balanced is the tricky part. The compound i use first is hondabond4. as the pulley spins, it flows and pretty much self balances. I then use hondabondHT for the adding mass part. The majority of mass added is towards the flange. On that particular motor, you want to keep the mass at or below 220grains for the total mass of pulley and loading.. You have to load the bottom cavity first. making a tool to direct the compound you use is strongly advised
Click to expand...

I can pick up the Hondabond 4 easily and fill in both the top and bottom of the pulley, but what does he mean by using the Hondabond HT for "the mass part" which is "added [...] toward the flange." Any clue?
 
That may have been a post he made earlier. He was always making some adjustments to the processes. When StuartB and I were working with him he only showed us that part using the HondaBond HT. We have Marc's set up where the pully is mounted upside down on a separate device and use a small piece of sturdy mater. I use Marc's triangular shaped wood shape about 1/8"-3/16" thick. You could put the pulley back on the motor upside down, add Hondabond to the hollow area. Make sure to use enough to fill or even over flow a bit. Start the motor, use something sturdy as mentioned above to push the Hondabond into the hollow to fill it then to smooth out the material and even it out.
Leave the center just a smidge lower then outer edge. That way the greater mass is to the outer edge or to the flange
 
Hose53 said:
That may have been a post he made earlier. He was always making some adjustments to the processes. When StuartB and I were working with him he only showed us that part using the HondaBond HT. We have Marc's set up where the pully is mounted upside down on a separate device and use a small piece of sturdy mater. I use Marc's triangular shaped wood shape about 1/8"-3/16" thick. You could put the pulley back on the motor upside down, add Hondabond to the hollow area. Make sure to use enough to fill or even over flow a bit. Start the motor, use something sturdy as mentioned above to push the Hondabond into the hollow to fill it then to smooth out the material and even it out.
Leave the center just a smidge lower then outer edge. That way the greater mass is to the outer edge or to the flange
Click to expand...
Thanks! This is very helpful. Maybe he combined the two products to hit that 220grains number he mentions in the post. But if you have had success just with HondaBond HT, then that saves me some cash.
 
Very welcome, make sure to let the first side set up really well before flipping it over.
I don't recall him mentioning the HondaBond 4 but if it is thinner he would have had to let it spin longer so it will set up well enough to support the additional material and using the squeegee/piece of wood to finish the surface. I did not see him do that at all
 
Hey folks,

Just ordered a Riverstone stylus tracker and looking at ordering a belt. Being in NZ I'm struggling a bit to locate a good one, would this be okay?

Today's plan is just a general tidy-up of the table and sorting out the oil situation for the motor (pretty sure we have royal purple here). My main concern is fixing the bent cantilever, but I'll get to that eventually

EDIT: Royal Purple is pretty scarce/expensive here, any other oil recommendations or do they do the same sort of thing? I have 0w-20 and 5w-40 at home but happy to go out and get any old 5w-20 to be safe
 
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