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This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
I own a beautifully cared for beosystem 3500, but due to age I now have a problem with the tone arm on the turntable. I have purchased a reconditioned MMC 2 cartridge, but it qasn't playing properly - the stylus is skipping and bouncing with the tracking weight set at 1.2 on the slider scale. I found that by increasing the weight, the reproduction gets better, but the slider is off the scale i.e. more than 2 gm. I acquired a stylus force gauge, but I can't find a way to use it. How do I get the tone arm to lower without the turntable revolving? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
In standby, place the gauge under the needle.Press and hold ">" and the tonearm will lower.The platter has to rotate to lower the tonearm because of the mechanics involved, but the carriage will not travel left,so you can measure the trackingforce on the surface outside the platter.
When done press STOP.
An additional 0.1-0.2g seems to be normal for reconditioned cartridges, but above 2g is wrong.Where did you buy the cartridge?Could you provide a photo or two of the needle/cantilever?
Martin
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Hi Martin,
Thank you very much for your help and information. First of all – sorry I made a typo and I meant to say it is a MMC4 cartridge, not MMC2.
Following your advice, I got a tracking weight of 1.42gm when the slider was set to 1.5( or as near as I could get). So that seems reasonably accurate, so if the tone arm is at the correct weight, then why is it not playing? The problem is that one channel is very low volume, and it seems to be jumping and skipping. I have attached some photos, but I am afraid my photographic skills are not too great – I hope you can see what you need to. I bought it from a guy in Germany, called FJS Tonabnehmer Service GmbH. He said that the tracking weight should be 1.4 – 1.6 g.
If you need to see better photos, I need to get someone with a steadier hand to help me. But I can do that in a day or so.
Thanks again
Alan
Martin,
very sorry, but unsuccessful at attaching pictures -how do I do it?
It looks now like the muting circuit is the root cause of my problem. I cleaned the muting switch and got sound on both channels( though quality still not good). Shortly afterwards the sound went again, further cleaning gave another temporary improvement. It seems as though I need to bypass the muting switch, but although I downloaded the service manual, I cannot fully understand how to do it - should I bypass the entire muting module PCB? and take the wires from the tonearm directly to the preamp?
many many thanks to anyone who can help me, getting a little bit desparate now!
Far more likely to be a defective cartridge.The muting switch does not switch the signals on and off. It grounds them.A bad contact in the muting switch would therefore result in a channel constant on - not a silent channel.
Unless the switch was once lubricated with something nasty (WD40 or whatever), and therefore sticks like glue.