TommyTomTom
Active Member
Usually, a standard S arm has a tiny plate fitted at it's end featuring a protruding nodule that catches the spiral groove inside a counterweight. This facilitates the linear motion of the counterweight as it's rotated either clockwise or anti-clockwise. However, I have two Technics SL-1300 arms here with no sign that they ever even had the nodule. There's not even a screw hole to secure it as with the others pictured below.
You can see that the arm on the left has the nodule whereas the one on the right has had it removed. The one in the centre is one of the 2 1300 tonearms. I also have a third which does have the nodule, but it does not seem to be fitted with a screw as with the other models.
Given the fact I have 2 that are the same, this is either indicative of a design flaw that leads to the nodule falling off or that these units are from a time before the nodule was invented. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the tonearm featured on the SL-1300 was the first ever of what became a very popular design. The SL-1300 and 1500 were successors of the SL-1100 and SL-1200 MK1 and both of these models shared the same tonearm which had a completely different counterweight mechanism. I don't know of a tonearm pre SL-1300 that featured the same rotary counterweight mechanism as employed on most standard S arms post 1974.
Update: Further investigation reveals that the nodule was simply integrated in to the end of the tonearm and had snapped off due to stress fracture.
Anybody come up with a solution?
Given the fact I have 2 that are the same, this is either indicative of a design flaw that leads to the nodule falling off or that these units are from a time before the nodule was invented. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the tonearm featured on the SL-1300 was the first ever of what became a very popular design. The SL-1300 and 1500 were successors of the SL-1100 and SL-1200 MK1 and both of these models shared the same tonearm which had a completely different counterweight mechanism. I don't know of a tonearm pre SL-1300 that featured the same rotary counterweight mechanism as employed on most standard S arms post 1974.
Update: Further investigation reveals that the nodule was simply integrated in to the end of the tonearm and had snapped off due to stress fracture.
Anybody come up with a solution?
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