Rock-ola 449 one last nagging issue

Yay cured

Only problem is I wish I knew what cured it had the relay out again and inspected it, all seemed fine and dandy ran through the process in the manual and did my best to follow the actions and to all intence and purposes it should have been working fine.

So popped everything back and low and behold it worked I just hate these types of faults, well its working now so as with anything, if its working dont touch.

Carried out a couple of alignment issues with the carosel and needle adjustments as I noticed both had drifted a tadge from the book spec, however after a dozen or so read-ins and play-outs the record mech has now decided that as it goes to pick the record off the turntable the arm jumps up about 5mm before closing on the record and thus misses the pick up

I think its a lubricant issue on the mech as its sticking slightly during the first action, question is what would folks say is the correct lube for these beasties, have a feeling in my early days when I first aquired her I just tended to use the deaded WD40 to get things moving of course knowing now that wasnt the best, well generally it isnt, I find its quite nasty stuff in general.

So what should I be using on the mech, a general purpose grease, light sewing machine oil, general spray grease (cant see that being too clever) a regular oil ?

Any advice gratefully appreciated

Chris

Search and thee shall find

For others wanting to know about lube for the Rockola this is a good thread viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2412

Shame the lube chart is a little bit low res but then its reasonable obviouse what needs doing

Chris

Your problem is definitely one of "lubrication". If you have not used WD on it, and you have SAE 20 wt.oil, you will need to saturate the "gripper assembly" with it. If you have used WD, have fun dis-assembling, cleaning, re-lubing, and re-assembling the whole gripper.
Following is "my procedure" to correct this problem:
Remove one record and select that "slot". Stop the gripper when the bow is straight up ( in the air ). Force oil into the "gripping" parts by actuating both "slides" with my hand while adding oil. When "pushed down", these both must "snap" back, when you let go. Saturate ALL areas that "move" including, and especially in between the two gears that ( should) slide past each other at the start of record pick-up. After oiling, play several A sides. If it's still jumping up prior to grabbing the record, hold your hand LIGHTLY on the end of the gripper arm as it attempts to pick the record up. Depending on how bad it's "sticking", you may need to do this up to 100 times --adding oil between the gears a few times! If this does not cure the problem, you will need to disassemble the gripper. Once operating properly on the A side, you may need to repeat the process again for the B side--once again adding oil to those two gears. Once you think you have it operating properly, you need to play at least 100 records--both sides, to keep it from happening again--
I would advise not to use "Lubriplate" as I find it builds up to a sticky glue after while. I use "CRC Stay-Lube MolyGraph hi pressure grease", in very small amounts--Only after removing all other "grease". A drop or two of the oil on the areas marked "grease", will suffice--
HTH, Ron Rich

Some great advice there Ron, thanks

Quite surprised you recommend SAE20 thought that might be a little too thick.

Well after giving all the areas you recommend a good soaking with some light machine oil first to unstick stuff, which it did with ease, I then re-lubed with sae 20 and all seems well now, have put through a good 100 plays through it now and its not missed a beat

We're pretty much sorted now, although the now playing numbering lights still dont work as intended but think thats to do with the sweeper disk contacts but its never worked right since day one and I dont fancy pulling it out as it looks like its a right pain and it doesnt detract that much from the whole playing experience.

Still wonder where that feedback on K6 was coming from, if it was that of course, very bizzare.

Chris

I like to revisit forum topics now and then if only to say that nearly two years on all is still well, gave it a little lube up the other day just to keep things sweet and also as we hadn't used it for a while and felt it would be wise to as we were going to have a party and knew it was going to take a hammering.

I can report back that after an evening of key bashing and playing it worked without fault, bar a dropped tone arm due to a poorly produced 45 grove, otherwise all was great.

I'd love to know how the fellow poster integrated their iPod into the amp, I've looked into this as a way of adding a bigger playlist to the machine but can see how you can do it without running the deck all the time

Chris