BG 1202 Mexico, SP14 and belt from Axel

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Søren Mexico Posted: Sat, Dec 22 2012 2:30 AM

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First I took out the old belt (the belt was working OK), and checked it against the new one, the old one is middle brown to the color, the new one from Axel is black, the new belt is the same diameter as the old belt. The new belt is a tiny bit shorter and feeling a little less elastic than the old one.

I put in the new belt and connected the deck to my BM 2400 with Beovox 1600s in my workshop,

I attached the SP14 to the tonearm and adjusted the "0" balance point, its a little more difficult to adjust this on these old type tonearms, than on the newer decks with MMC1-5, but  I did exactly as the manual recommend. I adjusted the weight to 1 Gram, to begin with, put on the Platters on the platter, started and slowly the platter started turning, too slow in my opinion, and when the arm lowered I could hear, much to slow, but the deck has been without movement for 6 month, so I just let it play for a while, shifted to 45 and let play and slowly the deck came up to speed, this deck was lubricated with silicone grease, it may get a little stiff if not used, I will open the deck and lubricate with Liquid Bearings and see if that's better.

After playing around for 15 min. the speed was there, a tiny bit slow, adjusted it with the speed adjustment  wheel

I have a very low hum in the right speaker at normal listening level, the hum follows the volume level, and goes away when the silent contacts are in, so it must be a failure in the deck, I had the tonearm out and all wires desoldered and put on a new 5 pin plug, so probably I didn´t work properly somewhere. 

At 1 gram Axels SP14 gave some distortion in the highs and muffled bass, adjusted to 1.5 grams and it got better, with 2 grams I got the best sound, the BM 2400 was adjusted to flat. The Platters LP is not in the best condition, some wear and a few nicks. So next on is to test it with the BM 5000 pizza box, Beovox 3000 panel speakers and a 180 gram record in mint condition, but that will have to wait until after the holidays.

Pics.