How to service/repair/replace the height adjustment on a technics 1200/1210 MK 2 turntable part 1

all James here um I'm just getting through a couple of my email requests and uh one that I got asked a lot about is the height adjustment on the Technics turntable uh a lot of you have said that the uh height adjustment is very stiff and it's really hard to turn you have to really runt it to turn it uh a couple of you said that it's um seized up all together and it just won't move and um only a couple of people have asked me how to replace it so that's three completely different things but I'm going to try and um cover all three in this one video because either way you've got to remove the tone arm assembly anyway to get to it so now that sounds really difficult but actually it's quite easy so right now just in case maybe you're not familiar with the height adjustment on a Technics turntable it's down here and it's all around the bottom here and if we unlock it oops now we can see that I'm trying to turn that and that is really really stiff and that is not moving why it's moving like I'm really putting some effort into that and that's hardly moving so um that's very seized up now I wouldn't say this is a common problem but it does happen and it's quite easy to fix uh I've got a 1200 in The Loft which is actually seized up all together and it just will not move so um you've basically got to remove this part here the whole tone arm assembly now that is actually easier to do than you think right now you are going to need a few things for this uh a bit of rag preferably stiff cotton so it doesn't sort of break apart and end up leaving crap in your deck um you are going to need some of this stuff now this is Fred cleaner uh you can buy this from most Mechanic stores but uh I've had some in my garage now if you can't get hold of any of this WD40 will do but um I would recommend you try and get some of this stuff if you can but if you can't like I say last resort WD40 uh you're going to need some multi-purpose grease or LM grease low melt grease uh you could even use tap grease uh but I would recommend you use multi-purpose grease and whatever you do do not use copper grease or lithium grease okay you can need a small selection screwdrivers just random sizes and different shapes uh a pair appliers uh Longnose ones would probably be better but these are the only ones I've got at hand and that's it really so uh once you got all those bits you can start right now you want to start by taking everything off the turntable that's removable like the counter weight the cartridge the slip mat and if you want to be on the safe side even the platter because you're not actually going to have to uh take this part off but you are going to have to tip it upside down so I guess it's a good idea to take that off regardless and once you've done that you need to find um something soft that you can put it upside down on to either a couple of cushions I'm going to use my uh trademark um fluffy bean bag thing which um I got some emails on people asking where I got it um I don't actually remember if I remember I'll email you back and let you know right now the next thing you want to do is to take all the screws out and take the feet off now I've done this already just to save time but if you want any more information on taking the screws out there's a link in the description that goes to another one of my videos where I go into a lot of detail about taking these screws out so if you're in doubt check it out right now next thing you need to do is peel the rubber off the bottom take this rubber bit off and uh set that aside now you want to pull the audio cables through the rubber piece um just to make it easier all right now you are going to have to now remove this this plastic piece here now the screws for this there's one here there's one here one here there's two there at the back but you don't want to take those out leave those those are for the hinge bracket there's one there there's one there and there's one in there take those screws out and this plastic piece should come off if you want any more information about those screws and about this plastic piece there's another Link in the description so again check it out if you're in doubt right now once you've taken all the screws out you should be able to just pull this plastic piece off and again you want to pull the audio cable and the Earth lead through the actual plastic piece cuz you are going to need to take them off all right now bit you want to get to is down here so let me just quickly move the camera right now this is the part you need to take off uh there's a screw there a screw there and a screw there there's three screws around here now once you take those three screws out that's all that's holding this piece in and also there's a little Earth lead there if you can see that and that connects to that side of the pitch fader so you're going to need to take that off as well so once you've taken out those three screws and that little Earth lead this should drop straight out so go ahead and take all those out and that right now once you've removed those three screws and taken the Earth lead off you should be able to just lift up this face plate and it will leave that part behind so um and then you can pull your audio cable through your hole like this and then down here you have the actual tone arm assembly so take this to another area where you can work on it right now the first thing you need to do is take the metal plate off the bottom here so the easiest thing to do first is to take the two screws out for the plastic clip now once you got that off then you can go ahead and take off the plastic clip all right now next thing to do is to take this metal plate off and easy to do one screw there one screw there so take those two screws out and the metal plate should come straight off remember as well to keep all your screws somewhere safe so you don't lose them right okay so once you got the metal plate off there's uh quite a few things inside here but the one thing you're interested in is this metal plate here with the two screws in now you can see where they are because there's a cut out here can you see that this cut out and the two screws there either side of that cut out right now first thing you need to do before you you uh take this off is you need to take this ring clip here off um so all you need to do with that is a pair of pliers and literally just grip it with the corner of your pliers and pull it off like that uh there's no like apparent reason for this uh this ring clip on here because uh it doesn't actually hold anything if you can see there's a massive gap between there and that's to hold that on but there's already a ring clip underneath that to hold that on you know that's solid on there so there doesn't appear appear to be any real reason for that but we will put it back on anyway okay so once you got that off you can take these two screws here out and then once you take those two screws out you can then take off the locking mechanism which uh I will show you how to do now right now once you got the uh two screws out you can use a screwdriver and just gently prize that part off like that and that's the part you've taken off now I'll put that aside somewhere safe okay so once you've taken that metal plate off off this uh bottom piece here should screw away from the toone arm so you should be able to screw this now the threads are the opposite way on this so you actually turn it backwards to loosen it um the threads go the opposite way so screw this part off remember this is the base part so grab hold of the part that you would normally turn to uh raise and lower it and then spin the bottom like this and screw it off but remember you got to do it the opposite way cuz it's unscrewed to screw okay so once you screwed that off that can sort of uh go aside for a second now here this is the part which you turn to um higher and lower the actual tone arm and you can go ahead and screw this part off now it should move even if it's seized it should move now you've got it out of that Barrel piece there so you can go ahead and unscrew that part off there like that now in there or around that frad there should be loads of Grease but on this one the grease is like it's kind of all gamy and so uh what we want to do is clean all that off so bear with me and I'll get these parts separated right I've got the parts separated now uh now this is the point where you want to use your uh frad cleaner if you've got it if not you're going to have to use WD40 uh if you use WD40 be careful when you're spraying it on that part and don't get too much of it on the circuit board ideally you want to um spray some WD40 on a cloth and then wipe that bit but on this stuff we're going to use a frad cleaner we're just going to put it in here around the actual threads put plenty on and then just use the rag to clean the threads out and you'll see the difference in a second once I've cleaned this see you can see all that muck that's come out of the threads there and that just cleans it all out okay so once you've done that you can go ahead and do the outside frad now this is a smaller frad so this one might require a couple of cleans on this one now this Fred clean is slightly oily so uh you want to be careful not to get it around this part here where you actually touch cuz it's rather greasy and horrible right so once you've done the actual adjusting ring you can move on and do this bottom piece here now this bottom piece is probably the part that's the problem so make sure you put plenty of cleaner in here and this actually looks pretty dry in there like there's no grease in there at all so that might be the problem okay so there you go once you got your threads cleaned off you can go ahead and put some fresh grease on there now now when you put the grease on don't sort of put too much on don't lacquer it on but be generous don't put like a tiny weeny amount on but make sure you put enough on cuz if you just lacker it on and put too much it's all going to squidge out and go everywhere and make a mess

Channel: viperfrank

Views: 177,484

Keywords: how, to, height, adjustment, technics, 1200/1210, MK, turntable, high, low, mechanism, tone, arm, base, thread, baring, grease, oil, seized, stuck, jammed

Id: _xJs7J1RViU

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 12 2009