philco turntable woas
 

Working on a philco L-1427-124 no audio orignally.

restored the amplifier circuit, whats wierd, it has power tubes only. no preamp on this amplifier. im guessing its a high gain high impedence crystal pickup?

Anyway... after restoring the amp, verifying all wire connections, the amp works, but its got almost like a ground fault like noise in the speaker, and no audio comming through at all.

Removed the turntable, and hooked the RCA connections to the amp into a CD player. buzz went away, however audio is extremely weak, which is probably normal since theres no pre-amp circuit. just a power stage, thats it.

Anyway, does this mean the pickup is bad? it has 4 wires, stereo pickup, i cant get a reading on any pins between any pins in any direction. so im assuming its bad.

If so, where can i get schematics or a new pickup for this unit? its sentimental. thanks.

Those single tube amps without a preamp use a high output (around 3 volts) crystal cartridge. There is a very good chance that it's bad. The low output of the amp while connected to a CD player is normal. The CD player kicks out not over 1 volt output, which is not enough to drive the amplifier.

yea thats what I figured.

anywhere to get a new cartridge?

Try these folks. Get all the numbers off your Philco and off of the cartridge and contact them. Should be able to help.

Reece

http://www.canadianastatic.com/

Only problem with getting the stylus cartridge out and read its numbers, is there is a little set-screw that goes inside of the flip handle, that flips the cartridge around, has 2 needles. one on each side, guess one does 78s, and the other does 33-45

I cant get the set screw out to remove the cart, i stripped it. dunno what to do now. hehe.

May have to go buy a fine drill bit and drill out the screw. The new cartridge will have the flipper knob and all, anyway.

Reece

Assuming i can find the cartridge, they dont list it on thier site. so i just emailed in the model numbers.

the whole cartridge flips around to play between 78 and 33/45 instead of just the needle. I havent seen one like that before. has needle installed on both sides of the cart.

but ill try using a dremel.

It also looks like I am going to have to re-grease everything. when the mechanics of the record changer kicks in, the turntable stops. I have to "push" the table while the mechanics are changing the record. othewise the table will stop spinning. once the mechanics get done, the table spins fine.

You need a new idler wheel. That's what drives or runs the whole mechanism. Sometimes a good cleaning can revive the old rubber idler surface for a while, but the best solution is a nice new idler wheel with fresh rubber. You can try this site: http://www.kenselectronics.com/lists/phonodrive.htm
They have a pretty good selection and if they don't have it, they can custom make a new wheel surface on your old one. Good Luck! Bob

ok, thanks man. ill see what i can dig up. First comes first, i gotta see if i can get the high output cartridge. otherwise, ill have to use a pre-amp and a standard magnetic type retrofitted in the tonearm

You may be able to get the cartridge rebuilt and new needles installed at West-Tech Services in Ohio.

http://www.west-techservices.com/

He may be able to resurface your idler wheel too.

--Bob

Another possibility: there may be a Ronette cartridge that will work here. They made some high-output cartridges that flipped over with needles on each side the way you described. Whichever cartridge vendor you choose may be able to cross-reference.

Reece

ok, thanks for the advice guys. ill see what i can come up with.