Our Internet and TV cable were down yesterday, so I decided to play some 45's for a change. I dug out my trusty little 1949 RCA 45 changer and the 6-RF-91 radio I built that the cabinet was in several pieces. I installed them on the island in the kitchen. Plugged them in, hooked them together. The radio was on FM, so I attempted to manipulate the function switch. The knob broke! So I thought, "no problem", then attempted to rob the knob off the tuner so I could move the function switch. It broke as well! I went to the shop, found a couple of temporary knobs, got that situation under control. I put a stack of records on the 45 changer, a couple played, then I heard a fairly loud pop. The next record fell on top of the tone arm. I shut the changer off, found that the slicers on the spindle were all wonky. One was on top of a record, one was on the bottom of the record. Somehow, the slicers got out of time. I removed the changer, records and all, to the shop for further inspection. I found that the pop I heard was the power cord coming in contact, somehow, with the star wheel on the bottom of the spindle. The pop was when the star wheel cut thru the power cord and made a spark. I turned the star wheel until the shelf and slicers were in time enough to remove the records. Then I cut the power cord off about six inches, resoldered it to the bottom, put the bakelite bottom back on the cabinet, prepared for my 45 changer to be a shelf queen. Just for grins, I put my test 45 on. It dropped and played perfectly. I have no idea how this changer is timed. All I did to retime it was to rotate the star wheel several revolutions to make sure it still worked okay, that nothing had been broken when I heard that pop. I had the 45 changer running thru the Stereo Festival I had on the bench, played a stack of country records, it seems okay.
Still wanting to entertain myself with 45's, I thought I'd fire up my Magnavox TP-241 and play 45's with it. I always check the needle and that before I put on a stack of records. The tone arm seemed really heavy to me. I checked it with my gram scale and it was almost 40 grams! The little wire thingy that holds the weight spring in place was laying in the cabinet and the spring was laying loose. Who knows how that happened. I put that back, set the weight to 3 grams, all was well. Well, ALMOST everything. The "on-off-reject" knob was really loose. It works, but it flops around way too much. My thinking is that the nut that holds it tight has worked loose, letting the control wobble around. Now the changer gets to come out. That's okay, though, because I found a chunk of Tolex that wasn't glued well enough that is coming loose and the changer has to come out to fix it.
This stuff we collect and spend so much time babying is OLD. It wasn't designed to work as old as they are now. If you don't use an item regularly, mine are always broke when I go to use them again. It never fails.....
A good leader is someone who can tell you where to go, and make you look forward to the trip.
Never allow someone who has done nothing to advise you on anything.
