301 thrift store find

[iain42]

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.

I was just reading those instructions again.

There was a really weird wiring terminal between the console and RCA plugs. I just cut it out because it was in a sorry state. Looks like I am going to Radio Shack again.

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.

This is almost how he had it setup. It was two terminal strips but with two other strips connected to them. Very strange. I'll give this a shot before attempting to solder anything.

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.

Looks like I have a plan for tomorrow afternoon....

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.

The braids don't look like they can take much heat. I'll be careful. I'll look at the tonearm more closely. Don't want to muck it up if I don't have too.

If I put the speed control to - it is very close to the right speed. The shaft doesn't need to be moved much. I'll try this and strobe again. Of course with the variac I can get it just perfect.

Superb directions again. I'm getting there slowly.

[Blue Angel]

Hi

My TPA12 arm had a thinnish wire inside with grey insulation and the same, strange connecting arrangements. I guess there were for mono operation, using a mono pre-amp and a single speaker. At the start, there was no real problem as everything worked on a single channel. I then at first, added a 4th pin to the bakelite h/shell and just ran a short, bridging wire between the + connectors of the rca sockets on the TPA12's armboard to give me mono sound on both channels.

Recently, I did some further work on the arm's wiring, using modern colour coding on 4 wires. I'm not sure where I got the wires from - possibly an old set of headphones but they were suitably soft and pliable and good enough for a brute like the TPA12. After the rewire, I again bridged the rca sockets' + for 2-channel/speaker mono and there's no hum issues at all.

If you consider replacing the old arm wire, this is fairly easy. There are some little fibre wedges fitting into slots inside the arm which can be removed with needlenose pliers.

blue

[iain42]

Hi

My TPA12 arm had a thinnish wire inside with grey insulation and the same, strange connecting arrangements. I guess there were for mono operation, using a mono pre-amp and a single speaker. At the start, there was no real problem as everything worked on a single channel. I then at first, added a 4th pin to the bakelite h/shell and just ran a short, bridging wire between the + connectors of the rca sockets on the TPA12's armboard to give me mono sound on both channels.

Recently, I did some further work on the arm's wiring, using modern colour coding on 4 wires. I'm not sure where I got the wires from - possibly an old set of headphones but they were suitably soft and pliable and good enough for a brute like the TPA12. After the rewire, I again bridged the rca sockets' + for 2-channel/speaker mono and there's no hum issues at all.

If you consider replacing the old arm wire, this is fairly easy. There are some little fibre wedges fitting into slots inside the arm which can be removed with needlenose pliers.

blue

Fortunately this one is already wired for stereo. I haven't encountered earth braid wire like this before. Why is tonearm wire so thin?

I need to hit radioshack afterwork.

[iain42]

Well I got the 301 crudely setup on my 107db 1w 1m horns. Surprisingly I couldn't hear any rumble. There was a faint hum so it looks like I'll need to add a ground wire. I'm not surprised by this but it is back to reading the rewire posts in this thread. I've been looking for documentation on the TPA tone arm but no luck so fair.

[josephazannieri]

Yo Iain:

Glad to hear that you have it running and singing.

There is a quick'n'dirty test to check for needing a ground wire. Get about 6' of #18 gauge wire. Put a gator clip on each end. Clamp one gator clip to the ground lug and the other to the chasis of yor amp, or if you have a ground lug on you amp, to the ground lug. The hum will go away when you make the connections. Saves you soldering, and lets you know right away.

"Ground lead" hum usually has more of a "buzz" quality to it. Efficient speakers like yours reveal it more than less efficient speakers, because they make more sound from less power.

Joe Z.

[iain42]

Yo Iain:

Glad to hear that you have it running and singing.

There is a quick'n'dirty test to check for needing a ground wire. Get about 6' of #18 gauge wire. Put a gator clip on each end. Clamp one gator clip to the ground lug and the other to the chasis of yor amp, or if you have a ground lug on you amp, to the ground lug. The hum will go away when you make the connections. Saves you soldering, and lets you know right away.

"Ground lead" hum usually has more of a "buzz" quality to it. Efficient speakers like yours reveal it more than less efficient speakers, because they make more sound from less power.

Joe Z.

That gator clip trick worked no buzz wow! You should really right the book on Garrard repair.



Well the running and singing is mostly correct. The last test was just very brief first track on the lp to check for problems. Which was surprisingly quiet. It seems I was hasty at deeming it a complete success so I stepped away for abit. I've been researching the TPA but just can't figure it out. The more I research the more I realize I don't know. Typical. When I put the needle down it woks for abit but then slides across the record. It sounds cool in a Yoko Ono sort of way. There is really not much info on the TPA12 so I had to include some TPA10 info. Not sure what I've done. Apparently I should have left the tonearm on the plinth.

If there is a Tonearm setup for dummies please forward to me. Still making progress though!

The TPA 12 is fairly close to this.

[Blue Angel]

Hi Iain

I mentioned that I have a TPA12 arm set up and in use for 78rpm shellac. The 'commisioning' of the arm was done in two stages after I acquired it recently. I first made an armboard for it and left the armwiring stock and got everything to work in mono. Since I'm not too familiar with oldtimer wiring, I then decided to add an extra pin on the headshells I have for it, which was fairly straightforward as I have precision turning and milling equipment in my workshop. Following fitting the extra headshell pin, I then re-wired the arm using 4 lengths of very thin armwire with modern colour coding ie Right + red, Right - green, Left + white and Left - blue.

I then fitted a pair of female rca sockets into the TPA12's armboard and soldered the armwires to these, so I could use plugin interconnects without having to mess with a long trailing armlead. For mono, I soldered a bridging wire between R+ and L+. So now I had a TPA12 arm with good quality wiring any monkey could figure what goes where. JoeZ has his own cartridge preference and since I had 3 nos Shure SC35C carts laying around, I modified one with stiffer suspension and sturdier cantilever fitted with a 78profile sapphire stylus which I had in stock. The sapphire will obviously not last as long as diamond but will still play plenty of 78's without damage to my collection.

I have plenty of photographs of the various changes I made but regrettable don't know how to upload them here. I have uploaded some pics on other forums directly from my own 'gallery' but this doesn't seem to work here.

Getting to the arm skating across the record: My TPA12 has a knurled wheel on top of the armweight behind the pivot. If you turn the wheel, it acts on a spring underneath, which increases or decreases the VTF (tracking force). I used my electronic scale to set the arm's downforce at 4.5g which gives me very good sound quality and no tracking problems.

Another reason for the arm skedaddling over the record may be that the turntable is perhaps not completely level.

Another rather messy job I did right at the start, was to clean out the old grease in the arm bearings and replaced that with Superlube, a product made in your country. Care should be taken as the ballraces are loose inside and can easily fall all over the place.

Hope this helps.

blue

[iain42]

Hi Iain

I mentioned that I have a TPA12 arm set up and in use for 78rpm shellac. The 'commisioning' of the arm was done in two stages after I acquired it recently. I first made an armboard for it and left the armwiring stock and got everything to work in mono. Since I'm not too familiar with oldtimer wiring, I then decided to add an extra pin on the headshells I have for it, which was fairly straightforward as I have precision turning and milling equipment in my workshop. Following fitting the extra headshell pin, I then re-wired the arm using 4 lengths of very thin armwire with modern colour coding ie Right + red, Right - green, Left + white and Left - blue.

I then fitted a pair of female rca sockets into the TPA12's armboard and soldered the armwires to these, so I could use plugin interconnects without having to mess with a long trailing armlead. For mono, I soldered a bridging wire between R+ and L+. So now I had a TPA12 arm with good quality wiring any monkey could figure what goes where. JoeZ has his own cartridge preference and since I had 3 nos Shure SC35C carts laying around, I modified one with stiffer suspension and sturdier cantilever fitted with a 78profile sapphire stylus which I had in stock. The sapphire will obviously not last as long as diamond but will still play plenty of 78's without damage to my collection.

Yes monkey easy helps!!!! I'll tackle the rewire eventually or send it out for rewire might be a better option.

I have plenty of photographs of the various changes I made but regrettable don't know how to upload them here. I have uploaded some pics on other forums directly from my own 'gallery' but this doesn't seem to work here.

Do you have a link to those posts? My email is iain42 AT gmail.com .

Getting to the arm skating across the record: My TPA12 has a knurled wheel on top of the armweight behind the pivot. If you turn the wheel, it acts on a spring underneath, which increases or decreases the VTF (tracking force). I used my electronic scale to set the arm's downforce at 4.5g which gives me very good sound quality and no tracking problems.

Mine has a screw on the top but no matter where it is it skates. I'll have to check under the arm to make sure all is well. The scale currently has it at 11g. Don't worry I tested with throw away vinyl. [/quote]

Another reason for the arm skedaddling over the record may be that the turntable is perhaps not completely level.

I will check this but now the table is exactly where I first listened to it when it came home and we listened to several Martin Denny records completely.

Another rather messy job I did right at the start, was
to clean out the old grease in the arm bearings and replaced that with Superlube, a product made in your country. Care should be taken as the ballraces are loose inside and can easily fall all over the place.

I will be careful and I think I've seen the superlube.

Hope this helps.

blue

Absolutely. You guys have been very patient and helpful with me. Hope I'm not too annoying with all the questions. I researched this one fairly well before posting yet another question.....

thanks

[Blue Angel]

Hello again, Iain

Not at all You can of course ask as many questions as you like. We are all enthusiasts here.

OK. I'll send you some pics later tonight. Just have to take the mutt for a walk.

If you need any more specific images of anything to do with the arm setup or whatever, just let me know.

Regards

blue angel

[josephazannieri]

Thanks to Blue Angel for the knowledgable post on the TPA 12. I would not have thought to just run the arm wires directly to RCA jacks, but it is an elegant solution that permits changing wires to suit the distance between the TT and the preamp. This thread has taught me some new things and given me some new information. I generally look for the simple solution, which may not always be the most elegant one.

But now I have some questions about the TPA 12. Perhaps Blue Angel can help me out. As a kid, back in the '50's, I looked in the Allied Radio catalogs and drooled over the Garrards, because I thought they were cool. They do have a wonderful period look to them. My experiences with most Garrard '50's and '60's products is that they are tough as nails and really hard to break.

I thought that the TPA 12 had a feature that permitted you to adjust the length of the arm, permitting you to set a TPA 12 to play 16" transcriptions. Some of the TPA's also had a feature that allowed you to adjust the angle between the headshell and the arm so you could get the right angle for the length of the arm and minimize tracking error. But Iain's arm does not seem to have this feature. How do you get the angle on that type unit to correspond with the arm length that you pick?

Iain indicated a question about munting distance. To figure this out, I would take the full size mounting template and bolt it to the old mounting board, putting holes in the TT hole marks on the template. Then you can measure from the center spindle mark on the template to the center of the old mounting hole, and Voila, you will have the old mounting distance! This is a starting point, and perhaps will correspond with the headshell angle already in the arm.

Looking at Iain's post on the later TPA 12, I see a stylus pressure adjustment that appears to be by turning a screw in the end of the arm pivot. Does this add pressure or take it away? Do you have to balance the arm before you apply the tracking force? On my old Type A, you balance the arm with the weight and then you add pressure with the spring. Maybe the TPA is the same.

As for the skating problem, I would be inclined to test the arm by taking all the pressure off, so it is balanced a little bit above the turntable level. Then you can see if the arm wants to rotate its own. If you have this problem, it will induce skating sometimes. Sometimes the arm wires, particularly if they are thick ones like you seem to have, will induce the arm to rotate on its own. You can also see if the arm is just stiff horizontally or vertically, as Blue suggests. It may have to be taken apart and cleaned and lubed to work right. It will skate inward naturally, but it should follow the grooves. If Blue can get his to track at 4 1/2 grams, then yours should do about as well.

On the issue of mono, there is a line of reasoning that says that when you parallel the channels in a stereo cartridge, the channels tend to load each other and reduce dynamic range. In my rig, it's wired in stereo to the preamp, and then I switch it to mono in the preamp. That avoids the problem of the cartridge loading itself, for whatever THAT'S worth.

Time to go now...Hope I haven't run off too much, and good luck once again from the old guy. And thank you Blue.

Joe Z.

[Blue Angel]

Hello Joe

I think you know more about these things than I do From earlier posts elsewhere, BrianC participated when I first mentioned I had acquired a TPA12 'bludgeon'. I think he wrote at the time that this model Garrard arm is not the most desirable in the series and I defer to that. I bought mine as corroded junk and compulsively took it apart and cleaned and polished it. One thing led to another and I thought since I already occasionally played shellacs, why not install the TPA12 as a second arm just for the 78's.

From what Iain wrote earlier, it looks like we can eliminate the tt level problem and although far too much VTF @ 11+g, this weight should completely prevent the arm from skating across the record.

The only thing I can think of, is there still a stylus on the cantilever?

Insofar as bridging R+ and L+ channels, I know this is only a kind of 'faux' mono and I think Joe's earlier wiring explanations are more correct than the way I have done mine now.

Perhaps BrianC can shed more light on these conundrums?

blue angel

[josephazannieri]

Iain:

I looked at your picture of the headshell again. Blue Angel might be right. You might need a new stylus. I can't see the actual point on the stylus in the picture, even though the cantilever looks good. It may also have some crud on it. You can check the stylus for gross defects with a good magnifying glass. It will reveal if you have lost the diamond. I have had that happen to other Shures. It will also reveal if the stylus is grossly cruddy. That will certainly cause the kind of problems you are having. If it's crud, you can get commercial stylus cleaner, or you can cheat and use alcohol and a short artist's brush to clean it off. Buy a cheap brush at a hobby shop, and cut the bristles off at about 1/4 inch or a little less. Brush strokes parallel with the cantilever.

Also, if you are at over 11 grams with this cartridge, you may have it loaded down so much that the cartridge is actually resting on the record. I tried it with my M44 and it was actually dragging on the TT. That's no good. If you have a bad stylus, you can get a Shure N44-7 stylus relatively cheap, but you shouldn't track it much more than 3 grams. You shoudn't need to.

Also, check what I described in my last post. See if there is some arm problem that is causing you to skate. It is natural for an arm to want to skate inward, but it should stay in the grooves.

Good luck again! And thanks to Blue Angel for his kind words.

Joe Z.

[iain42]

Ok I'll buy a new stylus and then try again. It feels like a tip is there but not positive. I've tried adjusting all the different screws and I can not change the weight. This is puzzling.

I've been asking around for a manual but no luck. Loricraft seems a likely source but the info on their page insist they don't reply to request other than service and repairs.

[josephazannieri]

Yo again, Iain.

Your picture makes me wonder if you are trying to play the 301 without having the arm fastened to the same board as the turntable. I have done such things as "experiments." If you don't have the arm fastened to the turntable board, the arm won't work properly, and it may cause the problems you are describing. Does the arm want to skate toward the center of the TT or skate toward the edge of the TT? The natural desire of arms is to skate inward. This is caused by the overhang that is part of the setup on all swinging arms, as opposed to linear trackers. If it skates out, then you probably have the arm positioned wrong, or the rig is grossly out of level.

When you take the plug in head out, what happens to the arm? Does it spring up? When that happens, see if the spring under the tail of the arm contracts. That will tell you how the pressure adjustment works. If the arm springs up and the spring contracts, then you know that the spring lifts the arm to set the stylus pressure. If that is the case, then you need to tighten the spring to lighten the load on your cartridge.

If the arm floats, even if it floats with the stylus end up high, you can just let it float and see if it has a natural desire to rotate. You can also see if it moves smoothly and easily, or if it hangs up in its travel. This diagnosis will help you decide if you need to clean out the bearings.

Looking at your TPA 12, and the pix you just posted, it may not be adjustable for length. I was comparing it to those pix of that TPA 10 that you posted previously. In the latest pictures I see a spring underneath the end of the arm. I believe that is the spring that controls the stylus pressure. This means that the screw on top of the arm near the bearing axis may be your adjustment for stylus pressure, and it may be a lifting spring device rather than a spring that pulls the arm toward the record to increase pressure. Your pressure adjustment may not be in the same place as the TPA 10.

Try turning the straight screw on the top of the arm, between the bearings, and see what happens. Try one turn and see if it feels like it is connected to something inside the arm. Put your finger under the end of the arm and see if you can feel anything move when you turn. If the screw just spins loose and it has no effect on the spring, then that's the reason why you can't change stylus pressure. If that is the case, then you need to inspect the arm and see what has come undone inside of it. Measure the stylus pressure before and after you turn the screw. see if there is any difference. That will tell you which way to turn it. It may be that you will have to turn it SLOWLY 5 or 6 turns to get some serious response out of it. If it feels like it is getting way loose, then BE CAREFUL. You don't want to disconnect the stylus pressure mechanism. Measure as you turn.

Once again, hope this helps. You need to cut that stylus pressure.

Joe Z.