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Philips 877 warped bottom cover

Fab9

Fab9

Member
Hi everyone, I’m starting this thread because I was recently given the Philips 877 turntable mentioned in the title.

It seems to work fine, but it suffers from the classic and severe warped bottom issue. Not only is the bottom plate bowed,but the right side is deformed as well. It's so warped that the antiskating mechanism and the tonearm balance touch the base and don't work properly; however, if I loosen the screws and lift the turntable away from the base, everything goes back to working correctly.

I'll post some pictures in the next few days when I have time to work on it. In the meantime, I wanted to ask if there are any fixes to repair this, or if I'd be better off trying to find a used replacement base.

Thanks everyone!
 
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Here are the pictures. The first photo is taken from Reddit because I forgot to take a picture of the turntable as a whole. I took the other two myself. As you can clearly see in the images, there is both a lateral curvature and a bulge at the bottom.The turntable does not have a stable support on the arm, but above all, these curvatures interfere with the scale and the antiskating mechanism.


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You could try bonding some steel strips or sheet into the affected areas. I was going to suggest building a new plinth but I doubt it’s worth it.
 
I believe I put this tt on a stand that allowed me to tighten the bottom cover screws while making sure the tracking force scale moved freely. I ended up making it work by getting all of the screws started, and them slowly tightening each one, little-by-little. If the mechanism tightened up, I reversed the screw slightly until it freed up and moved onto another. Surprisingly, this method worked for me. I vowed never to take the bottom off again.
 
If the bottom is meant to be flat, screw the whole thing to a piece of mdf. Leave holes for the top screws. Get the base all nice and warm in the sun and put it back together.
 
Thanks everyone for the replies!
I got this turntable for free and I’d hate to just throw it away, because from what I've read, it actually sounds great—the tonearm is really good and gives amazing results. However, it has this annoying issue with the base. I’ve been digging around online and found that other people (on vinylengine) have tried the hot gun mod, which I'm seriously considering.

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I had this table and mine was worse. I just made 1" tall legs from 1" wood dowels and painted them black and added rubber feet from Home depot to the four corners. Lifted it up above the warp and it actually sound better this way.

Athanasios
 
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Nashou66 said:
I had this table and mine was worse. I just made 1" tall legs from 1" wood dowels and painted them black and added rubber feet from Home depot to the four corners. Lifted it up above the warp and it actually sound better this way.

Athanasios
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Thank you so much for sharing your experience. In your case, did the turntable only have the issue of not sitting properly on the surface, or did you also have problems with the antiskating and the tonearm balance? In my case, the feet issue is easily fixable even without modifying the bottom panel, but I will be forced to use a heat gun to solve the antiskating and balance problems.
 
Thank you very much for your input in the discussion. How did you peel the paper off the side wall? Which solvent did you use, and then how did you glue it back to the wall and with what glue? Did you use metal plates to work, or did you work by heating and then bending the piece with your hands?
 
I had some aluminum plates that I used to clamp the bottom and distribute the heat from the heat gun.
For the side I used a chiselblade scalpel to peel back the paper after heating it a bit. No solvents. I then clamped the side to another aluminum plates and heated the plastic carefully and gradually bent it back by hand (wear gloves) and by using a piece of wood to help shape it.
The idea of just screwing it to a piece of mdf and heating it slowly should also work. The tricky bit is the side.
These turntables may appear plastic fantastic but they got very good reviews and the idea of a quartz controlled belt drive is typically Philips. To me they were to turntables a bit like Citroen were to cars.
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Plate on the outside
IMG_6337.jpegplate on the insideIMG_6340.jpeg
The bottom after clamping withe aluminum plates and heating
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Clamping the side against an aluminum plates (not really visible). The other plate is used as a heat deflector.
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After the repair. A very good fit.
 
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I don’t think it was necessary to glue it back on as it sat pretty well against the side (I only loosened the side), but a flexible water based glue/speaker glue would probably be a good option if needed. The issue is that the base seems to be made from polyethylene/polypropylene and that many glues have very poor adhesion to these plastics, which is probably why Philips chose the glue they used in the first place.
As you see from the pictures I loosened the foil, but clamped it down while doing heating, which kept it in place afterwards.
 
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