Phonoland

Hi everyone from a 50 something girl who knows nothing about phonographs or record players except how to play them I recently bought a Silvertone hi fi (made by Sears, not sure of the year. It plays 78, 33, 45 and 16) and have played it several times and it works and sounds awesome. I bought it because I wanted to be able to stack my 45's and not have to keep changing the record. Today I played 20 or so 45's and it started to sound like there was dust on the needle. So I raised the tonearm and blew on the needle like we did in the old days. Bad idea. Now when the record rejects, the arm moves VERY slowly just over to the beginning of the turntable. I tried a 33 and it rejects that but again the needle moves very slowly to the about 1/4" in from the beginning of the record. The tone arm feels as if it's caught on something I'm hoping its something very simple to fix. As I said, I've been playing records for days and they have been rejecting and playing perfectly. Hope someone can help

Do you actually feel the resistance if you move the arm horizontally? I hate to answer a question with a question. If so, maybe remove the back of the unit (is this a console?) and see if something is actually catching. It's highly unlikely, so some cleaning/lubing/servicing may be in order.

I don't know if Sears used VM changers in their units...my Montgomery Ward did, but these turntables have several adjustments under there:

1) The silver screw in the lower part of the picture adjusts how far in/out you want the needle to drop down on the record;
2) The black screw to the left of the copper colored spring adjusts the height of the arm. That little assembly makes contact with that little black piece extending upward from the base. You want to be able clear a stack of records, but don't want the arm so high to be scraping the underside of the records still on the spindle.
3) That black piece to the right of the copper spring is a long screw/assembly that actually stretches the spring for adjusting the stylus pressure. It is accessed through a hole as pictured below.

You confessed to not knowing anything about recordplayers, so get it professionally serviced or by someone who's familiar with turntables. You could possibly get in there and do more damage. --BB


Bobby Basham
Tucson, Arizona

After posting in a few other places, I've decided to look around for someone to service it. Thank you for your time though I'm not having much luck with google finding someone though. I'm in southeastern Connecticut. Does anyone know where I can look?

Those are Alliance (Tenna Rotor) changers made specifically for Silvertone.

First of all, they hold only 10 records.

You probably need a new idler wheel, or to lubricate the jockey arm assembly that holds it.