Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?

Thanks for your confidence in my abilities, redglobe, but even with a very generous conception of possibility, I'm not sure I can envision a world in which "You could perform the work yourself" is true of me. I tried to make interconnects once and all I managed to do was melt the pins of the connectors. If I were to try again, I would certainly take Lew's advice and get a decent station as my previous disaster was not all user error (I want to believe).

Yes, Lew, it was Bill and it was a quote for my technics and not the victor. It did include other things but since I didn't ask for those other things, I assumed it all came as a package. No matter. He fixed the technics w/o recapping and did so for a reasonable price, so I'm not complaining (quite the opposite in that case).

Resurrection complete.

After nearly a year of fruitless search for someone to fix my ailing Victor tt 101, I found the man of my audio dreams. His name is Dave Brown. I must have emailed 20-30 odd turntable repair shops and/or persons and had nothing to show for it until I found Dave’s cool website. He specializes in synthesizers (I think), but he’s a pro in the highest sense of the word, and took ‘all of’ 7 hours to diagnose and fix what others said was unfixable or too time consuming. He had never seen this turntable before, yet with service manual in hand he was able to do what seemed to me, and not just me, impossible. And yet he’s not a pro in the sense that he runs a shop (he used to, I believe); he now does repairs out of interest and by request only. He initially declined, citing the difficulty of accessing the victor’s circuit boards while powering the motor (a well grounded concern it turns out), but I’m a good beggar ☺.

On my understanding of what he told me, the boards used on the victor are ‘eyelet boards’. The solder connections through such boards tended to suffer cracking. This is what happened to mine. Some of the connections are heat sensitive, and that’s why I experienced the partial resurrection a few weeks back after leaving the unit on. The cracking is not necessarily evident to the naked eye, but after resoldering the boards, the table now works flawlessly. It should be noted that changing the power supply capacitors didn’t fix any of my troubles, but some of them appeared to be leaking so it was a good idea to do so.

He warns that not all is repairable: if the quartz clock responsible for the pitch control is broken, then most likely you have a doorstop.

So, in regards to that, there is some danger in living with this direct drive table, but the world is made less dangerous with Dave in it.

Gotta go find that Mahler now.

JVC QL-10
Someone in the US got lucky today.
Hopefully he might contribute here?
This one looks like a beauty?

Banquo, If, God forbid, you ever do have a problem with the quartz clock or any other unobtainium ICs that may be lurking in the circuit, you are not necessarily out of luck. If Victor was anything like Technics, you will find that some of the individual parts of this type were also used in lesser models, often available at much lower cost vs the TT101. Thus you can probably find a lower level Victor to use as a parts mule for your TT101, if push comes to shove.

Henry, This time I emphatically agree with you; someone got a steal on that TT101.

Dear Lewm: Yes, that JVC one was an steal at that price not only because the DD TT but because comes with a great JVC tonearm performer ( I own it . ).

If you read that ebay auction the seller gives almost no importance to the tonearm atacchen/mounted. Certainly he needs the money or his knowledge level about is " poor ".

I was looking for that JVC tonearm in the past, not very hard to find out, and suddenly I seen an ebay auction at very low price for a JVC TT that came with that tonearm and the JVC DD TT-71 ( great performer too, even the 101 and surpass the 801. ) and as here the seller ad was really for the TT so I bought it and now I can enjoy two great JVC items.

The tonearm is higly recomend.

Btw, for those that wants to have the DD naked experience and can't find out the JVC TT-101 or is expensive the TT-71 JVC option is something to experience and more easy to get.

Of course that the Denon DP-75 and DP-80 options are good ones too and at least at the same JVC TT-101 level but more easy to find out and I can tell you that through so many years using my Denon's I never had any single trouble about and knowing Denon I think ( I can't besure because I never had a problem. ) could be easy to find out TT parts to fix it in case a trouble with.

About the JVC TT-101 there are some parts in its design that are not shared in its down line brothers because it's an improved design. With Technics and Denon things are a little more " easy ".

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.