The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Please take a look at the photo. The part that's bent I'm calling the stylus, perhaps incorrectly. My fear is that if I attempt to unbend this piece, it will snap off. Any thoughts from the community how to proceed? Is this an unusual problem? Any chance the entire piece that's bent is available? I want to avoid buying another reproducer.

The bent piece is the stylus bar. Make sure the stylus is present. As you can see it is hinged on the back. You can move the stylus bar up. Then carefully bend the stylus bar so it is straight with a needle nose pliers. The metal is flexible. But is is fragile, so so the bend very slowly.
Harvey Kravitz

What about applying some heat before bending? I think I can disassemble the stylus. I'm not going to work on this until I'm in the right frame of mind.

When I did this type of repair, I didn't use heat. I just carefully bent the stylus bar. Also, if you use heat, you might melt the cement that holds the stylus in place. If you have anymore questions, just fire away, and I'll do my best to answer them. I have done this repair a few times.
Harvey Kravitz

Harvey’s right... just straighten it carefully with no heat.

Take a look at the photo. Nope, didn't use any heat, and yep, the metal was malleable enough to gently bend it back. I did use my staking set to remove the stylus from the body of the reproducer. Just needed to remove a small pin. This made it easer to get"at" it. Curt and Harvey, thanks again for the help.

But now something else. You can see this has to be set right with the correct gaskets. I've rebuilt columbia's analyzing reproducer. Any words to follow for rebuilding this one? I have two sizes of the white tubing that we get from Ron Sitko. Try that? Or something else?

John

Nope, you'll need a gasket Ron Sitko sells for this. It goes inside. Outside is sealed with wax, you can use beeswax warmed up enough to fit it around the outside and then use heat to set it into place. I have two of these I need to get around to doing myself

Sean