Hey, old turntable guys! Fisher MT-100

[drewl]

Ha!
I'm old too, but never really fiddled with turntables.

This old Fisher had weak intermittent sound from one channel.

I accidentally discovered the problem was from the needle.

It has a plug in module with four wires, checked all those connections, but it was the needle itself causing the problem.

By lightly lifting pressure off the arm, signal was coming out solid and strong from the bad side.

Cleaned and moved needle around, as it has two flanges that make contact with a gold bar in the cartridge before being split into four wires into the arm.

Left and right hot and ground I assume.

That all sound right?

The problem is trying to find albums that aren't scratched to hell for testing!

Customer also sent in matching Fisher tube receiver amp I fixed four years ago, still working great.

[olddawg]

Got a picture? Magnetic or ceramic cartridge? Is there a way to adjust the tone arm balance?

[olddawg]

Ok.. see that thing on the back of the tone arm with numbers in it? Turn the weight until the tone arm floats. Set the number scale to 0. Then turn the weight to 3.25 grams pressure. If that doesn’t cure the problem you may need a replacement needle or cartridge. But I bet your tone arm balance is out of wack. Btw.. that’s a magnetic cartridge. Probably an Audio Technica. But any standard magnetic cartridge and needle will work.

[drewl]

Yes it is an Audio Technica cartridge.

Adjusting arm pressure effects signal pickup, makes sense.

In Stark contrast, different customer has plastic turntable with arm skating.
The adjustment is a joke.

Wire melted into a plastic wheel that's supposed put tension on the arm.

Thanks for the info.

[Mick Bailey]

You also have to set the skating control.which is the dial that lies flat. A rough setting is to set it the same as the tracking weight.and then experiment from there. If it's not set correctly you can get channel imbalance, but an extreme setting indicates a problem. The alignment of the cartridge needs to be set in line with the record groove - do this first.