Analogic Sound

This turntable is one of the vintage beauties born back in 1979. The unit is so special mainly beacuse of its advanced tangential tracking using a linear motor. It is a unique engineering design wich improves performance and looks impressive also.

The turntable is a direct-drive. It uses a high quality Stable Hanging Rotor wich runs smooth even after 30 years of service.

The unit is extremely sensitive to transport. I saw this unit for sale “for parts” in the north of Italy at a fair price.

Here are some photos of the repairing process. This turntable sounds clear&powerful.
part 1 intervention :

At this point we performed this repair actions:
-cleaning&lubing the jog control shuttle
-cueing belt was repaced, cueing motor bracket rearranged
-cleaning, lubing and rearranging linear motor bearings, they were badly alligned mostly due to bad transport(this unit has its own transport procedure&kit when it comes from the factory)
-glue the dustcover
-fitting a new stylus

part 2 intervention:

After a few days of usage the unit showed some new defects wich were solved :

– the radiator for the motor driver had a poor thermal contact, radiator rearranged
-the speed lock/logic control components resoldered , some capacitors replaced so this solved the speed lock problem
-since I was there again, I lubed the main motor with Motip PTFE white grease, as it was bone dry.

According to service manual there is also a zero point adjustment but this turntable didn’t need that to be done.Once it is placed on level ground, works perfect.

Now it’s a fully working beauty!

Small update (april 2014)

No new problems appeared but I noticed that one of the rails for the head had a little play, a plastic bush was gone so it was replaced with a “home made” one as you can see in the picture.

I will post more pictures with the mainboard and with the main motor driver:

LE:
A lot of (inexperienced) users talk(on forums) about vinyl and it’s analogic sound, after years of discussion they realize that the wow&flutter matters a lot! that is a smart conclusion for them!

Just look at these parameters on thevintageknob.org :

http://www.thevintageknob.org/pioneer-PL-L1000.html

Wow & Flutter : < 0,025% (WRMS) < 0,013% (WRMS, measured at FG output) ROTATIONAL Build-up time : within 90° at 33 1/3 rpm Speed deviation : < 0,002% Speed vs load : stable up to 220g drag load Speed drift : < 0,00008% per hour at 33 1/3rpm < 0,00003% per temp degree change at 33 1/3rpm. This is an impressive japanese work of art!