EPA-250 Tonearm and B500 Base are beautifully engineered and manufactured.
B500 Base in perfect cosmetic condition had: 1. Frozen Arm Lifter and 2. Frozen Anti-Skate. Presumably stored a long time. Seller may have been unaware.
Tough decision: mess with it, or return it ..... I've never seen one, but Arne trusted me, I had my tools .......
IF anyone encounters these problems with this magnificent base:
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1. Arm lifter, 3 parts.
1a. top hand control lever, moves horizontally, it moved, but the actual lifter it activates was frozen
1b. round brass pin, less than 1/8" diameter, moves gently up and down about 1/4". It was frozen. When assembled, the pin is concealed by part 1c.
1c. curved black plastic piece, fastens to round pin 1b by a small screw, to both attach and to allow slight height adjustment on the pin.
The lifter was fully down, frozen in place, so low that the height adjustment screw was within the base, inaccessible
SOLUTION
A. very very slight repeated pressure to pry the lifter up (avoid marking base's finish), just up enough to allow access to the screw to remove top piece part 1c.
B. now able to grip the top of the round brass pin with small pliers and gently but forcefully raise and lower the pin, bit by bit. Avoid gripping the pin anywhere except the top portion, you do not want the part that recedes into the base to lose it's perfect surface.
C. after some up/dn movement: spin the pin in a circular rotation bit by bit, that finally gave a slight sense of freedom, enough I felt to allow some lubricant to get 'down' alongside the pin.
D. lubricant, just a few drops: sewing machine, liquid bearing, some fine lubricant. not the damping fluid, this is just for the sliding surface of the circular pin, not much is needed
E. slowly but surely the damping fluid within came to life, move the top lever, the pin raises. Heat transferred from your hands while working? Perhaps a hair dryer, a bit of warmth might have helped, but I didn't think of it till now.
F. reattach black plastic part c. I started 'high', IOW, kept the piece just low enough for the screw to tighten onto the pin, thus ok, or lower it a speck. happily this worked perfectly with no further adjustment.
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2. Anti-Skate Dial. The outer ring which is supposed to spin was frozen. I have no idea what is within that it activates when it rotates.
A. My thumbs still hurt, but you just have to get it moving, speck by speck, repeatedly move bit by bit, quite a lot back and forth, but eventually, just when you think your thumb is going to bleed, it freed up. Because I wasn't sure what was happening within, I wanted enough sense of motion, like the lifter, that I hoped the innards as well as the outer ring were moving. IOW, just barely being able to rotate it might not have been enough. Some heat from a hair dryer might have helped?
Happily, after install, when calibrating, it worked, however, the dial number did not correspond to the tracking force number (most do not I find). I used my groove-less LP, manually spin, watch the inward/outward movement, set is with very slight inward rather than very slight outward movement. Listened, L/R, balance of familiar imaging sounded 'right on'.
WHEW!
OH HAPPY DAY!
