Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?

Your Sony is probably still working because it has had one owner since new, who used it regularly, which is good for the longevity of the electrolytic capacitors inside. But they won't last forever.

i hope your glee to read of other people's problems is a put on for fun. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that score.

Lewm, of course it was in jest as I'm more than well aware of problems that occur with vintage equipment. I can honestly say this piece is a lone survivor and I pray it stays with me. Other vintage from the era has gone to equipment heaven. I sympathize with all who lost a piece of equipment that they loved. It's almost impossible to have it repaired and cost prohibitive. I cannot see myself forking out big $$$ for a new table. Please don't take offense.

No apology needed.
i advise you to replace all electrolytic capacitors now, before any problems associated with their failure occurs. It's cheap to do even if you have to pay someone else to do it. That plus maybe a relube of the bearing should get you another 30 years.

Dear @lewm : Normally in this and other threads but in the same subject your advise is the same : replace electrolytic caps and you terrorice the DD vintage owners with that not very good founded advise.

If you take 10K vintage DD TT maybe you can find out 10 of them that could be with some kind of problems and I'm not saying in specific that those problems came from the caps but from anywhere.

I own sevfal vintage DD TT from Denon, Technics, JVC and Pioneer and no single one even that were out of play for " hundreds " of years when I put to spin everything is fine.
Many of my  audio friends here what own are vintage DD TT and no one and I mean it never had a single problem with.

I respect you as as I respect other gentlemans in the thread but I think that we don't have to be worried about especially with units as that @gillatgh  's Sony.  Don't need to terrorice because of that.

I own other vintage electronics and never never failed because electrolytic caps ! ! ! 

Things are that from some years now the refurbished vintage TT ( as after market analog " improvements " items .)  is the best audio bus$sines of the last two centurys thank's to that " terrorice "  with no clear foundations that as always only: " I like it more than before. ".

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

@lewm

I have also seen your blanket statement that all vintage DD’s need to have all electrolytic capacitors replaced.

I have asked my tech (same as Halcro’s) a couple of times and he has stated - NO. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it unless its a known problem.
Replacing caps for no reason on 30+ year old boards/wiring can cause other issues as well as cost the customer $$ for no sound quality benefit. If a cap leaks, its easy to replace/fix is his advise.

My Exclusive P10 had speed issues and my tech replaced most of the caps, however it ended if a IC circuit was the issue - nothing to do with caps.
My Exclusive P3 stopped - it ended up just being fuse - he did not want to replace any caps as the table works perfectly.
My Technics SP10 mk3 famous speed chip failed - my tech fixed it per JP’s advise to bypass the IC circuit till he makes his new IC chips. I did not even ask him to replace the caps this time.

I agree with Raul on this one - no need for replace all electrolytic capacitors imo :-)

cheers