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Thorens TD-124 belt life.

spartanmanor

spartanmanor

Lunatic Member
I had refurbished my TD-124 about 6 years ago and really have not done much since but enjoy it. Lately I was beginning to notice it just didn't have the same umph as it used to and there seemed to be more rumble than I remembered after the fresh restore. I was looking into some new mods to see what I could do to add more isolation.

Well....the other night I was getting ready to spin a new album and when placing it on the spindle, I find that the albums spindle hole is not large enough and it will not go on. In my attempt to get the album on, the belt came off the pulley. Those of you with a 124 know that the spindle is always turning even though the upper platter is not.

In my attempt to put the belt back in place it slipped under the pulley assembly and was wedged under the idler wheel housing not a biggie but since I had another new unused belt I thought I should just give up on this one.

When I compared the two belts I was surprised how much the old belt had stretched, it was probably a good 1/2 longer than the new unused one, I am amazed it had not worked it self off earlier. The new belt is on and wow! to my ears the umph is back and the rumble is tamed. Lesson learned, I will now be changing my belts much more frequently.
 
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I find that the belt can shed rubber, so when my TD-124 starts getting noisy, I get some isopropyl and give the pulleys a good cleaning.

Last summer I was getting some excessive shedding - it was becoming noisy every week or two, after cleaning - so I finally got some Brasso and throughly polished the pulleys, removing any burrs. I haven’t had an shredding issues for at least a year.
 
I found this as well, Mine came with a dried out belt, it shed a lot of rubber, it had a section of pitted and missing rubber on the surface in the middle. I turned it inside out used it while waiting on a new belt, even after cleaning the rubber off the pulleys the belt itself makes a lot of noise and rings thru stepped pulley. A new belt cured that completely.
 
I live in a dry desert climate and I use to replace the belts on my 111 and 121 every other year. I replace the belt on my current 125 when ever I see it starting to fluctuate in speed when power is first applied. When the belt is new the TT comes up to speed smoothly and quickly for a belt driven table and seems to lock right on speed. When the belts get older the speed will very and drift when first started. That said on the 125 you get lower W&F when the belt has some time on it. As a guess I would say 50 hours over a couple of weeks. Other wise it can take over 100 ours with the unit being played sparingly. We had a Sound technology analyzer we used to check Turn tables with. I didn't have the 121 or 111 then, so can't give particulars. But from my experience its important to replace the motor mounts every three or 4 years and watch the rubber platter isolation mounts too.
 
beatcomber said:
Good... your pulleys must be free from the burrs that mine apparently had.
Click to expand...
The casting on the rotating surfaces leaves something to be desired. I took a dremmel to my pulley and cleaned one particularly bad burr. But even on seemingly smooth surfaces, the belt deposits rubber. IPA and a Q-tip cleans it up fairly well.
 
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