The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

My Opera is having trouble lifting up the weight on the Diamond A, I have to hold the weight up before lifting the lever, otherwise the stylus remains in contact with the record. I'm assuming this is a matter of a weak spring in the lift mechanism? Or is there some other sort of adjustment I'm missing? If the spring is to blame, is anyone making replacements these days?

Thanks for any insight anyone has to offer

With the cover off, here's how the leaf spring should look, in up "rest" position and extreme up postion. If your spring is intact you can remove it and bend it carefully a bit to have it press harder against the front frame. Better to remove and bend than trying to do it fastened.
If your leaf spring is missing one can be fabricated from an appropriate size of material. I had one made for myself for another machine.
Bob

Interesting, I haven't taken the cover off yet, I assumed the spring that did the heavy lifting was the coil spring visible just above the little finger that protrudes from the horn/reproducer bracket that lifts the weight. I'll have to take the covers off and take a look. Thanks!

When your moving the lever up and down to engage and disengage the feed screw, check to make sure the linkage between the feed screw lever and the reproducer weight lifting arm is moving freely up and down.
Also check to see if the lifting arm is properly lined up with the tang on the reproducer weight. If they are not lined up they tend to bind on contact instead of lifting the weight.

WEIGHT DOWN WEIGHT UP Best Regards, Larry

There's a coil spring attached to the lift finger.
Make sure it's not detached.

Great info! Yes it does seem to be binding up instead of lifting. I can't wait to get home and investigate further. I should also mention that this was not a problem with the L reproducer, but that has a much lighter weight on it. I will report my findings later on.

barnettrp21122 wrote:There's a coil spring attached to the lift finger.
Make sure it's not detached.

coil spring front view.jpg

coil spring back view.jpg

Yes, that's the spring I was referring to. Mine looks considerable more stretched out than yours though.

Depending where the lift lever is set when you insert the reproducer in its mount, you can get the little U-shaped linkage on the reproducer stuck ahead of, and bound up on, the "lifting paddle" on the machine, rather than sitting on top of the paddle, as shown in Larry's "Weight Up" photo.

In other words, when looking at the "Weight Up" photo, imagine if you were to push the U-shaped linkage ahead and off of the lift paddle, to where it would now drop and fall in front of the paddle edge. I just had the same thing happen on my Amberola 1A when I slipped in the reproducer while the paddle was up, instead of down.

This is what my setup looks like, after playing with it for another hour, I still can't figure out what's wrong:

With the lever lowered:
With the lever raised, you can see it is binding up and not lifting.
With the lever raised after helping it up, it rests normally if you hold the weight up while lifting the lever
Inside of the horn bracket:
Under the carriage cover; the spring under seemed sufficiently bent forward. :

Second pic of your last post may identify the problem. The paddle is set against the reproducer in such a way that when you raise it, it is not able to push up,but rather pushes somewhat horizontally and downward the limit hook. This could get bent when forcefully sliding the reproducer onto the machine and against the paddle. It may help to bend the vertical axis of the hook outward, (toward the paddle)just slightly and the bottom of the hook slightly upward so the paddle can more easily slide under. Be careful!

I've had a similar problem with my 1B.