by josephazannieri » 23 Feb 2009 04:22
Ok, Iain, here's what to do to figure out the wires. Blue Angel is right. My guess is also that the braid is the ground from the cartridge, but go back to the instructions a I gave you earlier on the "nonstandard" arm wiring. I instructed you to measure to the RCA plugs, but it now looks as if there are no RCA plugs. The braid wire is the wire that would attach to the outside shield of the RCA plug. The insulated wire is the wire that would attach to the center pin of the RCA plug. You may have to strip these back a little and unwind the shield braid from off the center conductor. You can use a needle to unwind the shield braid. Just use the braid instead of the outside of the RCA plug and the insulated wire instead of the center pin of the RCA plug, and go ahead and make the measurements. This will identify the wires as left and right.
Here is what to do to get it hooked up to play records. Buy a 5-lug terminal strip. You may be able to find one at Radio Shack. Fasten the terminal strip to the underside of the motor board, close to where the arm wires come through. Buy a 6- foot dual RCA plug stereo patch cable from Radio Shack. Doesn't have to be expensive, less than $5.00 will work fine. Now fasten the wires coming from the arm to the lugs on the terminal strip, one wire per lug. You will have a braid on one lug, and the corresponding wire on the next lug. Make sure that you have good mechanical connections to the lugs. Do not solder anything now.
Now take the cheap dual RCA wire and pick one end, and snip the RCA connectors off of it. Use a knife and strip back the outer insulation about 1 to 1 1/2 inches. You will expose the shield braid. Unwind the braid from the outside of the wire. Use a needle to unbraid it if necessary. The inner conductor will now be exposed. Strip the insulation on the inner conductor back about 3/8 of an inch, exposing the wire. You will now have a dual RCA plug wire with exposed shield and condictor on one end. Take each shield braid, and solder it to the lugs on the terminal strip that already have shield braid on them. One shield to each lug. Now take each center conductor and solder it to one of the lugs with the center conductor on it. The shields and center conductors should not switch. So, you should have continuous shield all the way through, and contimuous center conductor all the way through each wire all the way to the RCA plug at the end.
Plug the RCA plugs into the phono inputs. Play a record. If it hums, then you will need a ground wire. Here's what you do now. Run a piece of #18 stranded wire, also from Radio Shack, to the ground lug on the motor Fasten the other end of the wire to the 5th lug. Do not solder. Take about 6 feet of #18 stranded wire and attach it to the 5th lug. Strip the loose end, and crimp a red spade lug, also from Radio shack, to the loose end. Now you can solder to the ground lug, and to the terminal lug on the strip. If you don't want to solder to the ground lug, you can use a ring connector and hook to the underside of the screws that hold the turntable to the motor board. You will now have a proper turntable ground wire. Tie this to the chassis of your amp. This should get you operational.
When you solder, don't go crazy with heat, lest you short the center conductor to the shield. Just enough heat to get the solder to flow. Also, when you strip wires, particularly when you strip the wires out of the arm, be careful that you don't cut the center conductor.
What do you mean by a tad fast? Can you get the right speed with the eddy brake? If you can, just use the eddy brake to set the speed. You will see that there are little set screws that hold the motor pulley on the shaft. You can loosen these and move the pulley up and down enough to line it up with the idler. Hope this helps. Good luck from the old constructor. You are now becoming a younger constructor.
Joe Z.
Not bad macro photography.