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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
best-groove's avatar
best-groove
831 posts
 
@billwojo
I also bought a Victor 7045 in Japan some time ago and luckily the rubber damper holds the weight very well, so I only sent it for a complete overhaul in a technical laboratory, but I also own a QL7 with the same arm but built in simpler way, where the damper had yielded and the counterweight had dropped dramatically.

I repaired it myself with the rubber gaskets for sealing the taps and it started working excellently.



https://i.postimg.cc/kgGh2X8y/DSCN5962.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/MGDcgxPh/DSCN5956.jpg



If you can make the mold to build your own rubber damper that’s a great idea ... you could do business with manufacturing many rubber dampers for the many UA 7045/7082 arms around the world.

A tip: the vintage tonearms bought used must always be revised if you want to keep them in perfect efficiency as new; bearings with hardened and out of tolerance grease, and a lot of dirt stuck to it... hardened and dried out connecting cables, lifter not work or without siliconic grease and other problems that are not noticed take functionality away from the initial design and the cartridge will never track to the best of its ability.


Around $ 150 should always be budgeted for an overhaul when buying a used vintage arm as they are delicate mechanics like watches; Have you never had your famous brand mechanical watch serviced? I really hope not otherwise it would be very bad.
barolobrain
45 posts
 
I own a UA 7045.  I ended up using a piece of delrin rod, turned down to fit and cut to stub length, center drilled and fitted with a small bolt onto which the counterweight stub could thread onto, plus some neoprene washers, so the counterweight is effectively decouple from the arm assembly.  Total cost out was about $15 for the rod, hardware and washers.
bukanona
174 posts
 
IMO it’s important to match original rubber as it has it’s own resonance and in tonearm everything is important.

lewm
12,535 posts
 
Rubber and resonance. Will I ever sleep soundly?
billwojo OP
397 posts
 
bukanona, I have samples of different durometers of urethane coming to me. That way I can try and compare the original rubber to the urethane I'd like to use. Of course the rubber is probably somewhat changed after close to 40 years so it's all going to be a "best guess". It's going to be one of the softer durometers I'm pretty sure of that. It it was hard and firm I could simply machine it out of urethane barstock. The softer material doesn't machine well at all. Hence the casting research. If the UA-7045 works well as is I may just run it like that for awhile as well.

BillWojo
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