Have a Victor UA-7045 tonearm coming


I've been searching for either a Victor UA-7082 or a UA-7045 tonearm ever since I purchased my Victor CL-P2 plinth with two arm boards.
The rear arm is almost ready to go, it's a Audio Technica ATP-12T mounted in a custom aluminum armboard. I also had to machine a bracket to add a Jelco JL-45 tonearm cueing device and a tonearm rest. This should be perfect for my low compliance DL-103.I have been looking at both models of the Victor arms and have posted WTB on several forums, watching Ebay but nothing nice has come up. So for the past month I have been keeping an eye out on the Japanese website Yahoo Buyee and finally saw something I liked. It's a clean looking UA-7045 that should work out nicely.
https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/v741873067?_=cnZxVG5GZVlFQTA3VEZVTDBjQnRCS1RGYWtnTW1ZOTZORUVmb2R...=I won the auction this morning for $202.81, way cheaper than I've ever seen one of these go for. estimated shipping is around $50.00 via DHL. It takes up to two weeks for the seller to get the arm shipped to Buyee and they will inspect and repackage it for shipment via DHL. So in several weeks I'll have this in my hands.
Since I know the spindle to pivot distance I will machine an armboard for it in advance.
Anybody familiar with this series of arms knows all about the rubber damper in the counterweight stub that degrades and causes the dreaded tonearm droop where the weight starts hanging down.
There are two types of this series of arms, those that have the droop (most) and those that will develop it soon. Aging rubber and gravity never let up. Every arm will eventually have this problem.
I've talked to my friend Elliott about this as he had one of these arms for a short time. He sent me a sketch of a rubber piece that he made from hardware parts that he used to fix his. Between Elliott and the internet I found enough info to figure out how this comes apart but I'm not entirely happy with the fix. Since Victor can't supply the rubber dampers I've been thinking about possibly making a mold and casting them out of urethane. I have samples of urethane coming to me from a supplier so I can compare the hardness of the rubber bushing to the urethane samples to find a close matching durometer value.
The mold will be a simple affair, machined out of aluminum. I need to dig out a vacuum pump buried in my garage to see if it works and I found a vacuum chamber on Ebay for 50 bucks.
Once I get the arm I'll pull the stub off and get some critical measurements and work from there. I can even do a temporary fix on the stub until I have a decent result as I have never cast urethane before.Anyway, I'm very excited to be getting this tonearm and at least one member here (chakster) talks very highly of it.

BillWojo




billwojo
Bill, Now I am not sure what it is you want to replace. I had assumed you are talking about the rubber (I used the word "rubber" as a catch-all; I did not mean to insist on rubber in the formal sense) donut that provides decoupling of the CW assembly. So what are you referring to when you say, " if the square head of the bolt touches the small collar that holds the assembly in place than you have lost the damper effect"? Obviously you would choose a replacement part that does the job right. Incidentally, these days you can buy O-rings made from just about any variant on rubber that makes sense. Just go on-line to McMaster-Carr or there is another site that specializes in O-rings per se. Neoprene and urethane and etc are probably available. In fact, it would probably be more difficult to buy an O-ring made of conventional "rubber", if you wanted to.

By the way, I have written this elsewhere many times in the face of Chakster’s insistence that the CW has to stick out the back like a full-blown erection, there is some mechanical advantage to having a slight droop such that the center of mass of the CW lies in the plane of the LP. If you notice the design of modern tonearms, like the Triplanar and the Reed and etc, that’s how they do it intentionally.
lewm, you don't seem to understand that there is rubber inside and on the other side of that short aluminum piece that is attached to the pivoting collar. That must be replaced as well. The brass bolt must never touch any other metal except the stub that it screws into.
The original rubber piece was a molded part and it's the best way to replicate it. It's actually a very simple shouldered bushing with a hole in the middle. Very easy to make a mold up.
As far as o-rings I have o-ring kits in both inch and metric as I am a service tech. I also have an account at McMaster Carr, the main warehouse is only 35 minutes from me.

BillWojo
I'll have to take mine apart to see what you are talking about.  It's only apparent from the outside that there is the one black rubbery donut that creates the decoupling of the joint to the shaft that holds the CW.  Do you mean to say there is another non-metallic part inside?  Have you got a schematic or diagram?  My 7045 is not in use, so I haven't had to worry about it.  I replaced it in the context of my QL10 with a Fidelity Research FR64S. (QL10 = TT101 + plinth + tonearm, originally either a 7045 or 7082.)
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/attachments/analogue-source/619994d1496782254-jvc-ql-7-counterweight...If you look at the picture you will see that the brass bolt does not touch the aluminum ring, the rubber gets pushed into the notches and is trapped by the square head of the bolt. This gives total isolation of the tonearm stub when assembled. That small bit of rubber doesn't need to deteriorate much before the stub and counterweight droops.
I think this point is often overlooked when folks repair these arms. They let the brass bolt come in direct contact with the ring, this will render the damper as ineffective.

BillWojo