The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I started soaking the base of the tone arm assembly (again) this afternoon to see if I can free up and find the ball bearing spacer. I will go back and look later this evening.

[Edit: major deletion of content here. Improved version offered below]

After two days of soaking and rinsing the base of the arm assembly in solvent, I think I finally have the ball spacer free.

I cannot see it, because there seems to be something keeping it down in the bottom of the ball race area, but I can hear it moving when I turn the arm assembly over and back.

I did not find anymore needles. Three was enough, I guess. But with the colour change in the solvent and with the amount of debris washed out, I would say there had been a lot of hardened grease containing dust and pet hair left after my initial cleaning.

I am still trying to understand the structure of the arm assembly. I suspect that these are the component parts--I offer an improved, I hope, drawing from that which I deleted from the post above.
A: Pot metal arm with steel base
B: 2 rivets for attaching auto-brake trigger to arm
C: Auto-brake trigger
D: Pivot pin set screw and nut
E: Pot metal support bracket
F: Steel bottom plate
G: 2 rivets for attaching steel bottom plate to pot metal support bracket
H: 3 mounting screws for attaching assembled arm to motor board
I: Ball bearing spacer
J: Flanged throat, press fit into bottom plate
K: 5 ball bearings

Items G, the two rivets, for attaching the steel bottom plate to the pot metal support bracket seem very flimsy, perhaps there only to hold things together to speed assembly of the whole machine. They add no real strength to the assembled machine; the three mounting screws hold everything together against the motor board and the cork gasket.

There seems to be no reason that two small machine screws could not have been used here in place of the rivets, except that doing so would have added to the labour cost of building the machine. The holes would need to be threaded, and the screws would need to be screwed in—much faster and cheaper just to pop two flimsy rivets in place.

I guess that my next moves now are repainting the support bracket, then trying (blindly) to get the ball bearings re-seated in the spacer, and then re-greasing the ball race etc.

I am not certain what to do about the repainting. What I decide to do here is sort of dependent upon what I decide to do with the machine as a whole.

VV2-55s are not rare and unusual machines. Mine, with its dark and dour oxblood colour scheme, is not one of the prettier VV2-55 variants. The case is not in very good cosmetic condition. The motor has issues--too much slop in bearings leading to a bit of minor platter wobble. It is also quite noisy (cleaning and re-lubrication will undoubtedly lead to some improvement here). The whole thing seems to be covered in a thick coat of ancient tobacco sludge. Etc. Etc.

I generally prefer sympathetic restoration to complete renewal. But this machine may be slightly outside the scope of sympathy. I am tempted just to have fun with it, pursuing neither course, and just doing something wild with it, making it a pimped player rather than a reverentially treated artifact.

I have tried unsuccessfully a number of times now to colour match the oxblood paint on the support bracket for the tone arm.

It is a very complex colour. From a distance the colour appears to be a solid dark oxblood, but when viewed closely it is anything but uniform. There are colours within colours, purples, reds, browns, and blacks. There seems to have been an initial base coat/primer of a solid purple or mauve over which other colours were added to achieve a micro variegated effect.

I have had trouble even getting a solid colour that would look good from a distance.

So I have decided to strip all the paint off and repaint from scratch. The paint was not in the best of condition anyway. There were patches flaked off and some minor rust in the steel base that needed to be addressed.

I will probably paint it a hammered bronze or gold, a dark bronze if I decide to keep the oxblood on the motor board and lid, which I probably will.

It will be challenging to mask off the arm, but it will have to be done.

I am still tempted to take the assembly apart to ease the replacement of the ball bearings and grease packing, but doing so would not help with the painting. The arm still would not come out of the housing without removing the auto-brake trigger arm which would require removal of the two rivets that hold in it place. And I would have an even more loose and floppy arm would only increase the challenge of re-painting.

Interestingly it took a variety of solvents to remove different components of the paint. In the end acetone was required, followed by methyl hydrate.

Here below you can see the remnants of the purple, especially in the pot metal. This is before cleaning things (residual paint and some rust) up with steel wool.
Oh, and by the way, I have actually caught glimpses of the ball bearing spacer. It does exist.

I got to have a close look at a smashed apart arm on another VV2-55 the other day.

Curiously, the assemblage containing the ball race under the arm support bracket is almost completely different in construction from mine. I learned nothing useful from studying it, except that the ball bearing spacer is probably the same in both and that if I am to get the ball bearings back into mine, I am probably going to have to disassemble everything and just take my chances with the pot metal support bracket.

Lah Ca wrote: Mon May 26, 2025 6:52 pm ... I am probably going to have to disassemble everything and just take my chances with the pot metal support bracket.

Just curious, if the balls were able to come out without disassembly, why can they not be replaced without disassembly?

JerryVan wrote: Tue May 27, 2025 6:30 am

Lah Ca wrote: Mon May 26, 2025 6:52 pm ... I am probably going to have to disassemble everything and just take my chances with the pot metal support bracket.

Just curious, if the balls were able to come out without disassembly, why can they not be replaced without disassembly?

Good question.

Do you remember those little puzzle games which were a small wooden box with a glass or plastic lid. Inside the box there was a flat sheet of wood with a pattern of holes drilled in it. Then there were a number of ball bearings that matched the number of holes. The holes were slightly smaller than the diameter of the ball bearings. You had to tilt the box around, rolling the bearings, attempting to get them seated in the holes without dislodging any that you had already succeeded in seating. It was difficult enough to do when you could see through the top of the puzzle.

From what I could see with the broken VV2-55 arm assembly, I think it is a similar puzzle. I would say that the ball spacer acts like a collar that both keeps the bearings equidistantly spaced and keeps them next to the sound tube that goes down to the horn, bearings seated between the spacer and the tube. When the arm unit is reassembled and the pivot pin is set to an appropriate tightness, the bearings are retained in position--grease also helps keep them in position. Unfortunately, there seems to be space enough outside the ring formed by the spacer for the bearings to sit there, too, albeit not fully seated. So the whole thing becomes like one of the ball bearing puzzle boxes discussed above, but one that you must do blindly, never really knowing if you have been successful.

I have a strong feeling that if will be much easier, if riskier, to gently and slowly, drill out the rivets with a hand drill, remove the bottom of the arm assembly, and position the bearing in the spacer, securing them with grease, before reassembly. I do not have tools or stock for riveting and riveting would be high risk. So I would probably attempt reassembly with machine screws, lock washers, nuts, and and locktite. If there is not enough space under the assembly to accommodate the nut and lock washer, I could always file the nut down, or I could drill holes in the motor board.

No decisions have been made yet. And I will probably try the puzzle game first.

This is all very back burner at the moment.

And the machine, as a whole, itself, while working, sort of, after a fashion, probably has no more value than that of the reproducer. Most sane people, a group that I do not seem to be a member of, would put the sad thing away way up on a shelf as a repository of parts.