Re: How to deal with a Seized Ultona reproducer head ?
Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2010 5:35 pm
There's a notch in the tonearm where you can remove the reproducer, you have to rotate it all the way to the left.
Sean
Sean
I had a free day yesterday, so I decided to pull the whole tone-arm and put it in the freezer.
The machine is presently in my unheated garage, and temps have been in the low to mid 20's (F) lately.
On my way to the cellar, where the deep-freeze is, I was looking-over the whole affair, and began to try to move the Ultona head.
I decided to remove the spring-loaded detent pin from the Edison side of the head, to elminate any interference from that, and after some application of lighter-fluid to the swivel joint and some persistence, the head finally budged slightly, and I was eventually able to work it off the tube.
The pot metal is not cracked, but apparently the tube was swollen just enough to jam in the reproducer body.
It appears to have been tightest between the holes in the sides of the tube and the collar for the detent pin.
About a half an hour with some 400 grit automotive paper and a jewelers file, and repeated fittings with the reproducer head allowed me to polish things down enough for a workable fit.
(The arm never made it to the deep-freeze, by the way...)
As dark was falling, I trotted back out to the garage with the revived tone-arm and a Diamond Disc, installed the arm, and attempted to play a Billy Murray - Ada Jones DD... unfortunately, the Brunswick motor really didn't want to run in sub-freezing weather...
but the Ultona head seems to work fine.I took some pics of the project and will try to put together a post about the project on Tech Tips.
The machine is a Brunswick 117 upright, by the way.
Cheers !