this may look like something Shango 066 pulled out of an abandoned mining town
but actually found this on the side of the road it was among a collection of
items set out for trash pickers the first time I drove by I saw a 90s boom
box which looked like a pretty high-end model and also what looked like a
miniature Lakewood box fan it was one of those smaller versions that looked just
like their big ones but was about half the size but by the time I came back
about 10 minutes later both of those items were gone but I noticed there was
some vintage audio equipment also there there was two 1970s receivers
neither of them were high-end one had a built-in 8-track player and the other
one had a BSR record changer with a big chunk missing out of its dust cover
and also some old bookshelf speakers and then I saw this it's a zenith record
changer don't know if it has their famous micro touch 2g tonearm or not
obviously I can't even see it through all the dirt on the dust cover and I also
noticed it includes a phono preamp so it obviously has a magnetic cartridge of
some kind and looks like somebody included the packaging of a replacement
needle for it so obviously I'll need to do quite a bit of cleaning up of this
and hopefully I can get it working so I'm not going to show the cleaning
process on video so you'll just see the finished product when I'm done well it's
certainly amazing what kind of difference some window cleaner and paper
towels can make that's all the cleaning products I've used so far dust cover is
not perfect it has some scratches and scuffs in it but that's to be expected
in any turntable that's 40 plus years old and it was not actually that dirty
inside it was just rather dusty and I was able to clean it up pretty well and
this is not a micro touch 2g tonearm but it is still pretty nice it has an
adjustable counterweight and anti skating I don't know where it was set
because I was knocking these things around when I was cleaning it
I pulled off the stylus so it wouldn't get damaged when I was cleaning and I
probably can't show this on video but it actually seems to have a intact stylus
needle on there so that may still be good I don't know what kind of cartridge
this is but I guess I can look up what kind of stylus that is based on the
information on this package I got with it was it's a here Shure M71, 74, 75,
81 so it's one of those and if this is actually the stylus that was in this
package it has an elliptical 0.3 by 0.7 mil stylus and it's designed for a
tracking force of 2 grams product of japan made for Pfanstiehl the
generic stylus and I know it's this has a setting for 78 so I could get a three
mil stylus on this and use it for playing 78 and the turntable spins nice
and freely I did not have to lubricate it or anything so it's not like a BSR
where the grease in there turns to glue after so many years and the whole
thing gets frozen up this is still nice and free and it still shows some signs
of life I put it on auto and then spin the platter you can see the tonearm
acts as if it's gonna play a record I don't have to start on there right now
I put it over there to auto return it auto returns as well so hopefully that
will be working so I was brave and connected it to AC power and at first
the motor was barely even moving at all but now it actually looks like it's
trying to come up to correct speed but I don't know if it has enough torque to
operate the mechanism It's trying but then it just comes to a stop I don't
know if this is idler drive or belt drive I'm assuming idler drive because
that's what most of these record changers were but
I'll have to pull off the platter and see what's going on with that the phono
preamp also cleaned up nice so I'll see if this works as well I may have myself
a fully working free turntable with a potentially still good stylus just for
some cleaning up with paper towels and window cleaner so here's the progress
with the zenith record changer I removed the platter it wasn't that
difficult I just pulled out the spindle and curiously even though this was
obviously designed to be a record changer it only came with this short
spindle for playing one record at a time I assumed it originally came with both this
and longer spindle for stacking up records and the previous owner only left
the short one in it when I got it then I took off this trim piece I just stuck a
little screwdriver in the hole and pried it up and it popped off without causing
any damage to it then I took off the c-clip and then the platter just pulled
right off and it obviously is an idler wheel drive mechanism I did lubricate
the parts of the mechanism I could see and the main problem is that this rubber
idler wheel is hard as a rock it's lost all of its flexibility there
are various ways to fix that obviously you could just replace it or you could
shave it down and then put an o-ring over it which is what some people do
there's also a product called rubber rejuvenator which softens up the rubber
and there are various homebrew solutions for trying to do the same thing without
paying for that expensive product and one of the solutions
I saw mentioned is Goo Gone so I'm gonna get a cotton swab and put some Goo Gone
on this and see if that softens it up well I don't know how that Goo Gone is
gonna work on the idler wheel but it did a great job in removing the rubber
residue from the motor spindle there and this is a very quiet motor in this
turntable you probably can't even hear that I have it running right now
so I'll see how this turns out meanwhile I checked the stylus with my little
two-dollar Chinese 60X microscope and it's actually still good it actually
looks almost brand new and if we look at the phono cartridge from the bottom we
can see it's a Shure M75 it's an M75 CSZ to be specific and I found it in
the 1978 Shure catalog as part of their extra durability high trackability
cartridges series they list the M75 CS I guess in my case the Z on the end
stands for a Zenith and one notable thing about this cartridge is is
extremely high output of 9.3 millivolts most magnetic phono cartridges have an
output of around 3 to 5 millivolts so I got out a record I don't really care
about this is one of those sound-alike records that were popular in the 70s and
I connected it to my little battery-powered mixer here for phono
input now this turntable even though it has a counterweight it also has a spring
to adjust the tracking force so I just did it for 2 grams and I said the anti
skating to 2 grams because it has scales here for elliptical stylus as
well as a conical stylus so I set it to 2 on the scale for elliptical stylus
because that's why I have installed and it is basically working I can put on
auto here but that rubber tire is still not in good shape even after trying to
renew it with the Goo Gone because I had to help it otherwise it would just stop
under the stress of trying to run the automatic mechanism but once it gets
going it's ok although I can tell it's playing slow not very slow but
noticeably slow and it's getting quieter I think as I'm using it more but you can
hear that rubber tire in there is making noise so it may still need that
to be replaced or it may have to do the trick of shaving it down and putting an
o-ring around it otherwise it is playing and I'll give you a little sample of how
it sounds
so it still needs some more work but hey it's not bad for a free turntable
especially considering the condition it was in its model number MC9020
I looked at the service manual and it's dated October 1979 so it's actually
newer than I thought this thing was and here it says no user serviceable parts
inside refer servicing to qualified service personnel now I declare myself
to be qualified I cleaned out all the old grease in this entire mechanism it has
a nice big AC motor on rubber shock mounts to absorb some of the vibration and here
it says Plessey Consumer Products and here it says made in England this is a
Garrard record changer that's the company who actually made this for
Zenith well I tried all sorts of homebrew solutions to repair this idler
wheel I tried Goo-Gone that didn't really help
I tried sandpapering the edge again that made only a minor improvement
I tried coating it with liquid electrical tape and that actually made
it worse and I tried soaking it in brake fluid
for half an hour that made basically no difference and finally the solution
ended up being exactly what you see here I found a rubber band that was exactly
the right size to fit around the edge and I glued it in place
that was strange I heard aircraft interference on the radio
of course now they're not going to do it now them trying to listen for it that
sometimes happens on my 1994 Panasonic stereo as well especially in the upper
end of the FM band you can hear airplane transmissions cut in on your FM
[airplane radio transmission] anyway back to
the record changer here as I said I found a small rubber band just the right
size to fit around the edge and I glued it in place and so far it's held up I
was a little worried that as soon as I would change speeds it would pop off but
it hasn't so far and with this kind of idler the diameter
does not affect the speed of the record player so it doesn't matter that made it
slightly larger of this rubber band around the edge of it if this was a more
valuable or a sentimental record player I would send this in to Gary at
TheVoiceOfMusic.com and for $28 he'll exchange this for one where the rubber
has been entirely replaced and that's the real solution for something like
this but for a free junker record player like this this is a free solution so now
the turntable operates silently you can't hear all that rumbling anymore
and the automatic function works although it does slow down quite a bit
when it's getting going but it does not stop like it did before and I just did
it so we're lowers the tone arm in the right place I have it raised so it
doesn't go all the way down and the automatic return works as well
and if you're working on one of these yourself this is the screw to adjust a
tracking force this is the screw to adjust where it sets down the tonearm
at the beginning of the record which also controls where it picks up at the
end of the record and where it lays down the tonearm when it's done so that's
sort of an all-in-one adjustment and this screw here the one it's vertical
adjust how high the tone arm lifts up both with the automatic mechanism and
with the manual lifter so those are your three main adjustments as well as the
ante skating the only remaining problem is that it takes a lot of effort to
operate this speed selector switch and I've cleaned and lubricated all the
accessible parts of the mechanism but the selector switch has a big long
linkage going all the way over here and there are parts of it that are hidden by
the tonearm mechanism so I probably would need to tear the whole thing apart
to really get that working properly but it still works oh you just got a really
pull on it and as for this little preamp it came with after a good cleaning it
works except the left channel is louder than the right channel and I know it's
not the turntable's fault because I tried reversing the input connections and
still the left channel is louder than the right so I have my mixer hooked back up
and let's close this video by opening the door with Pete Townsend