The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Hooray for being the 1000th post in this section!

Ok so I opened this tonearm upside down and all the bearings fell out before I could get a chance to look at them! I have cleaned everything and I'm ready to reassemble. However, this bearing configuration is much different than a Victor. I set up the bearings on the side to what I think they should look like, but I have 6 ball bearings and 4 little curved rods. So it looks like I have extra ball bearings. Does anyone know how they should go?

Looks as if you need 2 more little curved rods; are you sure they're not stuck in there?

ps - I thought I had an extra Viva-Tonal tone-arm in the cellar, but cannot find it. There's another in the car, but getting at it is too cumbersome.

I checked for them and they are not in there. I can look around and see if maybe they fell out somewhere

Edisone wrote:Looks as if you need 2 more little curved rods; are you sure they're not stuck in there?

I didn't find them They must be somewhere in my workshop, which I'm going to completely clean and organize soon, so for the time being, I have found a plastic covered paper clip that is approximately the size of the race pieces, hopefully they will suffice! Thanks for telling me that I was missing them!

One of our forum members has the two curved rod pieces that I need! Hooray!

Have you gotten it back together? Please let us know how it works, when done.

Yes I have put it back together! They work similar to a Victor bearing race, except the race is split into 6 rod pieces with ball bearings in the spaces. I have drawn a diagram of it, the blue piece is the part that limits the tonearm from tracking off the turntable.