Is there anyone in North East Victoria or NSW Riverina that can service or repair Garrard Auto Changers.

I have a couple of vintage UK made portable record players that I want serviced and or repaired.

I would love to learn how to service them myself if they are relatively simple.
I am a complete novice

Stephen

I hate auto changers, great way of dropping records onto the tone arm.

Basically the major hassle with them is lack of lubrication & dried out grease soap. Other than that, with the exception of a couple like the one that I have here in a HMV from 1954 (which belongs to a Club) and was clearly designed by a mechanical infidel, they rarely give trouble.

How old are these record players & brand.... like HMV

Marc

Hi Marc

The two I have are a 1962 E.A.R (Electric Audio Reproducers) Music Maker Deluxe and a 1963-4 Dynatron Carnival GR8

These were top of the line models back in the day. They have push pull amplifiers so they sound excellent for portables of this era.

The E.A.R has a Garrard Autoslim and the Dynatron a Garrard AT6.

Steve

Each Turntable has a manual and the manual has the specs for setting it up again ,,, it will tell you what to set it too , So the first step is to get a copy of the service Manual ....... Pete

I have service manuals for both types of turntables Pete.

I just lack the confidence to have a go myself

Well well! If we have service manuals we are better than 90% of the way to accomplishing something. One of the biggest no no's is to use engine oil: Engine oil is designed to pick up water and if you dare use it to mix two stroke fuel; Proof: It will go white & become incombustible in the engine.

The only reference re grease I have was from a Philips push button radio where they used Shell Alvania 2. I am not sure what that is currently(?) despite the fact that this place was using Shell before it changed its name to Shell from Bio Co in the 1920's.

They may quote oil & grease specs in the manual? Rule no 2 is that if you do not know what brand, or type of grease was used, you have to remove the lot. Some time ago CASA had a thing on that as mixing brands & types, can actually cause the grease soap to go solid; principally due to the different bases & chemicals used to get spec. I have seen this happen in automotive wheel bearings and they burn.

Pitchers I just pulled apart a bsr turntable that had not been serviced in 70 odd years. No one had been to it apart from breaking the speed control knob. If it's not been got to then it's fixable because it did work At one stage. In this bsr there were joints that were seized solid. Some looked like they were a solid piece but on closer inspection they were not. After pulling the rubber fly wheels off I pulled everything apart while taking photos and putting the little pieces aside I applied plenty of heat . Which loosened the hard set grease. Believe me the grease is as hard as Marcc says. Taking care to dismantle and reassemble, it should work , it's commonsense if it worked before it will work again.
Mine worked and I'm stoked.

If its a BSR consider yourself fortunate. There is one form of grease that they used that literally welded the platter to the spindle & hell & damnation would not move it: And I did not believe that until I actually had one of them come here.

If you run some sewing machine oil down the shaft, use a hair dryer that will soften it, done it many times,

On this particular model you can try anything you like: Worldwide issue. It seems to be one of the additives in the grease. Retrospectively it was probably a better idea like Philips, & use Shell.

Lighting Kerosene & Avtur are good on grease & not as volatile as some other solvents. Not an indoor project.

I did have a five Litre container quarter full sitting on the verandah briefly: I noted it wandering past the workshop door when a wind gust got over 15 knots. It can only get as far as the fence 20 metres away.

Marc