Nude Turntable Project

Banquo, Your idea of the cause of the glitches in my TT101 operation is a good one. When we first got it to run at all, it exhibited all sorts of crazy forms of malfunction, even though every single electrolytic capacitor had been replaced, and Bill eventually tracked it down to bad solder joints or solder tracings, just as you say. He told me he spent a lot of time re-soldering various tracings (for which he did not charge), and his work resulted in what appeared to be complete success, based on how the table worked in his shop. It is quite possible that the mechanical trauma associated with travel from his place to mine (about 20 miles on the DC Beltway, which is not exactly cushion-y) put some stresses on other tracings that are now faulty. Can you be more explicit about what you mean when you say "feed through" tracings? I was thinking that soldering of the wires in one or more of the many multi-prong plugs that interconnect the various PCBs could be the source of the current problem.

Halcro, Of course you have every right to post on the subject of this thread (heh-heh). I personally have no desire to argue further about plinth, no-plinth, or arm pods. This is not because I don't care but rather because I can see now that your rig is very nicely done so as to mitigate any criticism I might have of the concepts. I still think that the basic structure of the L07D, with the rock solid connection between the bearing housing and the tonearm mount, is ideal, whether or not the L07D is top dog in all other ways. And as I've said several times, I do also think that getting rid of the "deck" structure surrounding the platter is beneficial. The more the tt chassis resembles a cylinder with the diameter only slightly greater than that of the platter, the better. This is one way toward good sound, not the only way. Fortunately for us, it is easy to achieve the latter goal with the Victor and Denon DD turntables.

Lew, I think what Banquo is talking about is that wires that go from one board to the other are fastened by wire that is just wrapped around a stud that is soldered to pcb. This is a known problem and should be addressed if it hasn't been already.

See pic here for description notably at tranny's a/c connections. If you look closely the same procedure is used throughout. Now these pics are from a TT71 and not sure if the 81 and 101 are similiar.

http://amp8.web.fc2.com/amp-etc/record/victor/tt-71-2.htm

http://www.amp8.com/amp-etc/record/victor/tt-71.htm

Ecir and Banquo, Before reading Ecir's post, I was about to say that I looked up the definition of "feed through eyelet" via Google, and to my amazement I found the definition. I had never heard that term before. Ecir, in one of those URLs I do see a number of short posts with wires wound or obviously soldered to them, on the various PCBs. There sure are several of those in the TT101. I will check them. But the formal definition of a "feed through eyelet" is a connector that goes through a PCB, connecting a circuit on one side to a circuit on the back side of the same PCB. Guess I will look for those too. (Or perhaps those posts do connect to tracings on the other side of those PCBs, which would not be visible in the photos.) Thanks to you both.

Yes those post are soldered on the other side and are used in that fashions so as not to have to remove the pcb to service other conecting components.

To me this is a prime example of a reason to service the bearing of the motor, nothing last forever as much as the manufacture would have you believe.

There were no bad parts, just bad connections. I ended up resoldering all the feed thru eyelets, then flipping the board and removing the solder with a sucker, then resoldering them with much less solder. They all look pretty clean now. I know other companies that used the eyelet method had reliability problems. For some reason the solder cracks around the eyelets, probably related to different coefficients of thermal expansion.

That's from an email my tech Dave Brown sent me. In a different email, he distinguishes between what he calls 'feed thru eyelet' boards and 'plated thru' ones. The Victor evidently uses the former. I am completely ignorant of the meanings of the 2 terms--am just passing on others' wisdom as I received it.