Tonearm repair

What's the history of your arm? If it was overrated too far in either direction, the wires could have gotten pinched in the vertical pivot joint. If the arm was transported without being properly secured, this could have occurred.

I'm thinking what jdjohn proposed is what happened, pinched wires.

Here is a typical DIN plug in arm pivot post wire diagram. To check for pinched wires, check each terminal to terminal and terminal to arm as well. Only the ground terminal should read continuity between ground and arm. If you have more than one wire with continuity to arm or pivot or other terminals, you do have pinched or shorted wires.

I've rewired arms, but not an FR14. Typically, the removable headshell nut assembly is secured to arm with tiny screw. The DIN plug in arm base might be set screw holding it in. Desoldering wires will be required at one end. My choice is always at DIN plug as it is larger. Take a pic or make diagram noting colors, connections. Typically, you have excess wire in arm pivot base to pull din plug out and work with it.

When I rewire an arm, I prefer not to disassemble bearings. I solder a thin wire to DIN end wires and push/pull wires through arm end. (Your 'fish tape' or pull wire has to be long enough to pull wires back through). If you have some old CAT 5 stranded around, you can source 24 gauge pull wire from there. Stranded is more flexible to pull wires through.

Some arms will have small piece of foam around wires where tonearm meets pivot. That is why I remove wires from arm end first.

Good luck!

SCompRacer wrote: »

When I rewire an arm, I prefer not to disassemble bearings.

Absolutely. If the tonearm wires are truly pinched in the bearings, hopefully they will come loose fairly easily, without a lot of 'encouragement', or having to disassemble the bearings in order to get them out.

Just an FYI, Analog Magik does FR rebuilds. While they refer to the FR-64S / FR-66S, your arm situation could be similar.

"The old FR tonearm wire has a jacket that is over 50 yrs old, and very often it breaks at the 90-degree bend at the bearing. We see this very often with FR rebuilds. The jacket material also hardened over time, some literally break off like bread crumbs. "

They also mention the bearing grease dries causing bearings to seize.



https://www.analogmagik.com/fr64s

🤞

How's the VTA? Is the tonearm parallel to the surface of the record when playing? Check to see if the arm is rubbing against the cue lift bar, creating friction that prevents the tonearm from moving freely laterally. Sometimes the height of that cue lift bar/platform needs to be lowered/raised when installed on a different turntable.

I had a similar problem with my SME3009 when I first installed it. It was a case of the pivot bearing being too tight. It was imperceptible when I tried to manually rotate it, but the needle kept skipping no matter how much I adjusted anti skate and tracking force. I backed off the nut that tensions the bearings about 1/8 to 1/4 turn and the problem went away completely.

I don't recall ever seeing that many quality arms in one place. That would be really cool to see all those arms displayed together

Impressive collection!