Andy,
It's ok if you did it differently and ignored my advice. I simply offered what I thought and still think is the correct way to do this job. I don't take it personally as an attempt to discredit. However, the common sense, the manual, and the nature of the task all convince me that you should not be dismantling anything on your own for this purpose. You also assumed that the brass piece the manual speaks of is hidden below the pulley whereas the most plausible (and to me most sensical) answer is that it is the brass collar on top of the plinth around the pulley.
Btw, I don't even know how you removed the tiny screws from the pulley; they don't look like any screw I've seen before, and appear to require a special tool to remove them. That also tells me that this is not a user-serviceable part.
Anyway, the best way to settle this once and for all is to ask VPI directly. Hopefully, it will also prompt them to clarify this in the manual.
It's ok if you did it differently and ignored my advice. I simply offered what I thought and still think is the correct way to do this job. I don't take it personally as an attempt to discredit. However, the common sense, the manual, and the nature of the task all convince me that you should not be dismantling anything on your own for this purpose. You also assumed that the brass piece the manual speaks of is hidden below the pulley whereas the most plausible (and to me most sensical) answer is that it is the brass collar on top of the plinth around the pulley.
Btw, I don't even know how you removed the tiny screws from the pulley; they don't look like any screw I've seen before, and appear to require a special tool to remove them. That also tells me that this is not a user-serviceable part.
Anyway, the best way to settle this once and for all is to ask VPI directly. Hopefully, it will also prompt them to clarify this in the manual.