1970s Soundesign Record Player
 

Yesterday I broght home from the flea Market to work on for the owner a 1970s vintage Soundesign Record Player which is just a record player with a built-in solid state amplifier and auxilary input and for some reason the record player when you try to use the changer mechanism will shut the machine off when it drops the tonearm onto the record and I removed the record player out of the cabinet and looked it over and I don't see what's causing the issue, any thoughts or ideas as to what could be causing this issue?

Thanks,

Levi

It probably uses a BSR Changer which is gummed up and will have to be re-lubed.
Soundesighn was so very very horrid back in the day, but 1000 times better than the craptastic Crosleys available today....

Yes it does use a BSR Changer, and its a 4 speed one at that, which is surprising because most record changers during the 1970s were either 2 or 3 speeds.

I didn't think that a gummed up mechanism would cause it to shut off on its own after dropping the tonearm on the record for playing.

It's gotta be in the changer tho. Maybe something is overloading it?
Does it play normally on manual? The BSR's for as cheap as they were, aren't that hard to work on, but it's about certain they are ALL gummed up now.....

Well I took the mechanism apart cleaned up all of the old grease and put in new grease and it now drops the tone arm and plays normally like it should without shutting it off after dropping the tonearm after dropping the record, but now the issue is that when the changer triggers at the end of the record and when it goes to drop the tonearm onto the rest instead of dropping the tonearm onto the rest it drops it back onto the record and then shuts off the record player instead of dropping the tonearm into the rest and shutting it off.
I already checked the tonearm positioning screw and that's not the issue.

Any other ideas?

You have to run it through it's cycles. Be sure it is exhibiting it's specific cycles
the end of record, no new record, and end of record with a new one to drop. It
may be another problem than you think, more grease glue in a different spot, if
you can not see distinct different cycles. And it may also have a tone arm position
problem, 3 in one Oh-No you have it in front of you, you have to figure it out.

----------

Soundesign and BSR were yesterdays Yougo's, but by Today's standards; Cadillacs !

HA HA HA !

.

Well that's the problem it works fine when its dropping a record initially but when it gets to the end of the record that's where it screws up and doesn't cycle properly when it gets to the end of the record (with no more records to drop in the changer) its supposed to take the tonearm and drop it back onto the tonearm rest and shut off the machine but instead it acts like its going to take the tonearm back to the tonearm rest but then instead of dropping it on the rest it drops it back on the record and then shuts off the machine which isn't what its supposed to do, and I'm not sure what it does when it has another record cued up on the changer as I've only tried it with one record on the changer, but yeah it seems that there's something wrong with the gear that operates the changer mechanism as it doesn't seem to stop at the right spot for dropping the tonearm back on the rest when the end of record cycle finishes. The drop size adjustment switch function works fine (the 12, 10, and 7 switch for dropping the tonearm onto the right size of record).
Its just that the end of the record cycle function doesn't work right and there was not any dried grease left anywhere anywhere in that changer mechanism except on the cycle cam gear but that I didn't think would throw off the changer mechanism that much but maybe I'll double check that when I get home later on.

I think there are 2 grooves in the cam, and the shutoff mechanism connected to the overarm shifts the arm movement mechanism from the normal track that places the tonearm onto the record, to the alternate track that sets the arm on the rest post. Sounds like something is binding or sticky still, or maybe something is lubricated that should be dry.

Well I can try to take the platter off and see if I can take the cam gear off of the record player and clean the old grease off and relube it with new grease and see if that helps any or not but I'm not sure if that would make a difference or not. I'm wondering if maybe the alternate track groove that you mentioned that's supposed to drop the tonearm off onto the tonearm rest isn't maybe stripped or something or maybe its just so badly worn that the tracking pin just won't go off into that alternate track groove anymore.
Like I said I won't know until I get that cam gear out of the record player and examine it carefully for signs of unusual wear or dried up lube possibly gumming up and blocking the path to that alternate groove.

EDIT: Took the cam gear out and there was only one groove track on it and it was in the shape of a teardrop and I took and cleaned up the old lube and relubed it with new grease and put it back together and tried it out and it works fine when dropping one record and then ending the first record and then dropping the last record and playing it through but then when it gets to the end of the final record and goes to try and drop the tonearm onto the tonearm rest it instead drops it back onto the record and shuts off, just like it has been doing the whole entire time and there's absolutely no dried gummy grease left in this changer anywhere now because I completely overhauled this changer by completely removing the old grease and putting on new grease on every single part that needed grease and left all of the parts that were supposed to be dry greaseless, and its still doing the thing with dropping the tonearm onto the record during the ending cycle instead of on the tonearm rest like its supposed to and then shutting off, and the tonearm adjustment is where its supposed to be at because I tried adjusting that before because I thought maybe that was the issue initially the tone arm would set down onto the tonearm rest at the end of the ending cycle but then when I would try to get the changer to drop the record from the changer to start it it would drop the tonearm too far outside of the recording and it wouldn't play the record then, so the tonearm adjustments are just fine, there's clearly something else that's causing this issue. But I'm not sure what it is.

The issue descibed may be caused by the record stabilizer arm not tripping the otherwise hidden"seesaw" lever after the last record drops. That lever could be bent also.
This is preventing the stepped cam from advancing and putting the tonearm on its perch.

Most of my BSR experiences involve horrid grease-turned-glue. After heating the spindle, using nutbuster penetrant, it would not let go until I started beating on the spindle "sleeve" just to get the platter off. A guy on youtube, showing BSR repair, had it easy compared to this.

I have repaired enough BSR's and agree that once cleaned and lubed, they are good units and reliable. Certainly better than any of low priced record players of late.

I had one of those, where the turntable wouldn't budge. I tried using Liquid Wrench, but almost ruined the plastic turntable. It was starting to melt it.
I finally took the propane torch to it.
I had a GE changer, that did the same. :sigh:

I'd probably remove it from the unit, and throw it away. There are better replacements to be had.

Would an old V-M changer work with it with the right modifications to the "plinth"?