Apocalypse Now?—Technics sp10 problem s

A couple of months ago my friend’s SP10 MKII had the same slight grinding noise at the bearing. At first, he thought it was the problem of either the main bearing or some of the chips under the turntable chassis. However, when we switched the separate power supply to the one I had, the problem went away. It turned out that some of the electrolytic caps in his power supply had gone bad. After he changed all the caps in the power supply, all is well, and even the strobe light, which hasn’t work for a long time already, is now working.

On the other hand, I have a SP10 MKII which has erratic speed due to a bad speed control chip. I was told this is not fixable since even Technics doesn’t have that chip in stock anymore.

There is so much "urban legend" surrounding these turntables, that it is difficult to find the truth.

Thekong, In fact, I doubt Technics has ANY parts for ANY of these turntables, but the chip you need may be the same as that used in later Technics tts, such as the recently discontinued SL1200 series and the related turntables (SL1500, SL1600, etc), some of which are available quite cheaply on eBay. Also, I found a supposed NLA chip for my Denon DP80 by doing an internet search which led me to a company in Hong Kong that is an information depot for many other small electronic supply companies in the Far East. Through their auspices I found enough of the Denon chips to go back into DP80 production, if necessary, for as little as 35 cents each. See if the faulty chip has an alphanumerical code on it, and put that right into Google. You may be surprised, pleasantly.

Banquo, I will take a look at the site. Now that you describe your problem in more detail, I still say that you should not be taking advice at a distance from us amateurs. Your problems might all be solved by changing out your electrolytic caps, which, as I said above, should be done anyway if not already done. But regardless, you need Bruce Berdan or Bill Thalmann or someone of that ilk. A good machinist can probably repair the worn part that you are looking at, assuming even that it needs to be done. One bit of advice I do have: don't be running the motor without the platter. Without the platter, the servo mechanism will be very unhappy. By the way, if you are using a very heavy platter mat OR a very light one, in relation to the weight of the stock rubber mat, try going back to stock and see what happens.

Re plinth-lessness: You guys are really doing two non-standard things; you are running without a plinth, and you have your tonearms mounted on a separate pod. I have an open mind about the plinth issue, but IMO it really is better to fix the tonearm mount on the same mechanical linkage with the turntable bearing. However, I know very well that some disagree.

Dear Banquo / Lewn

I can confirm its not the plinthless setup - that thread was my inspiration as well to pull mine out of the plinth over the holidays. I dont see myself going back to a plinth anytime soon. Too much flexibility now with arms and sound improved too.

With the mkII there is no issue but with the torque of the mkIII - well I don't have one so cant say.

What I have noticed is that folks give the mk II table a try plinthless while waiting for their plinth. They dont secure it properly and the arm pod is who knows what. Even BDR cones with blue tac will hold the mk ii down no problem. I use an ET arm with mine and if it is moving on me I will notice.

I can put up a link to some pics later?

Ct0517, So let me get this straight: You are running your Mk2 with no plinth, AND you have an ET2 tonearm mounted on a separate something that is completely disassociated from the Mk2. Is that correct? How do you assure that the ET2 is on the exact same plane with the Mk2 platter, so that the cartridge is not riding up or downhill as it traverses the LP, not to mention all the other crucial spatial orientations associated with use of a straight line tonearm? Anyway, if that is your set-up, and if it works, go for it.

To me, this might prove that we are all much too anal; the playback process apparently may tolerate all sorts of alignment and resonant inaccuracy before we start to hear the problems. One thing I definitely will agree with is that a "bad" plinth is quite likely to be inferior to proper implementation of the no-plinth idea. I would like to hear from someone who went from Albert Porter's Panzerholz plinth or a Dobbins plinth or the like, to no-plinth and preferred the no-plinth.

As I said, my TT was used for broadcast. Those guys drilled a tonearm hole right through the Technics metal top. When I first got the TT, I mounted their tonearm into that hole. The spindle to pivot distance was perfect but I could not get the correct height so that VTA was always way too high. Either they didn't care or else had a very low hanging cart. So, having no plinth, I had to fabricate a separate board to hold the tonearm. Obviously, there's no point in comparing the two set ups, since the former was so compromised.

And, to be clear, I'm not saying plinthless is better. It just sounds so good that I don't feel the need currently to spend money on fabricating a plinth. This is fortuitous since I'll have a hefty repair bill coming my way, I'm sure.

Would it sound better with a plinth? I hope so, since that way I can get better sound without buying a different TT. But, as Ct0517 said, tonearm flexibility is a strong consideration in favor of going without. I'm new to vinyl and want to be able to play around with different arms in the future.