Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?

I emailed 4 techs about my problem and after initial confidence and enthusiasm they've backed off--after I sent them the service manual.

I snooped around and googled some of the IC part numbers, and all the ones I looked up are available from various sources. So, evidently they are not unobtainium.

What appears to be unobtainium is a tech who can do the job and do so without asking for an arm and a leg.

On a brighter note, the hunk of turntable I have does look nice in my office.

I'm wondering what Bill Thalmann said?
He is supposed to be the guru for SP10s and it would surprise me if he thought the TT-101 was 'over his head'?

Bill knows the sp10 circuit but he's unfamiliar with the Victor. Consequently, it would take him far longer to diagnose a problem with the latter. And since time is money, he told me he couldn't afford the time it would take to fix it. This suggests it is fixable, but just not by him given his constraints.

To live less dangerously, we need to find a hobbyist with time on his hands. I imagine a person like the one who runs the Kenwood l07d site but with a Victor emphasis would be perfect.

Atma-Sphere (alias Ralph)

I knew this guy that used a pigskin platter pad... he would buy *raw* pigskin at the local slaughterhouse, cut it out and kept the thing in a jar in the 'fridge when not in use, until the bacteria got to it... the LPs tended to get greasy and smelled like bacon.

The idea is that it was 'natural'- natural sound, get it? The slaughterhouse stopped selling to him when they found out what he was up to...

I do that too but only use the special "bacon mat" when playing Pink Floyd, "Pigs On The Wing."

Otherwise it goes back in the frig...

I want to resurrect this thread with a resurrection story.

I told my story of woe above and the table has just been sitting on a cabinet since last August mocking me. I was going to sell it for parts but on a whim I decided to plug it in and leave the power on overnight. I recalled that my sp10, when it was acting up, would benefit from being left on, so I thought why not try it with the victor.

Lo and behold the following morning I pushed start and it remained running for a good long time--something it had never done, as it had the habit of stopping the platter after 30 seconds or so. After some fits in the next couple of hours it maintained perfect speed for 8 hours. It's the first time it's played music since I bought it last June. I heard its glory for those 8 hours last night! This is one fine tt.

A guy from Portland with whom I had emailing about the table suggests that it might be the capacitors reforming after long storage. Seems plausible.

All is not perfect however. This morning it reverted to its old ways for a couple of hours. It's now running again perfectly, so who knows what's going on. One thing that could be the problem is the electronic braking function: it doesn't always engage.

I feel like I'm living on borrowed time. I'm taking it to a tech soon to have the power supply capacitors replaced and the braking circuit examined. Mercifully it doesn't appear to involve the speed circuitry.

Now back to the music.