The seller has a high rating & sounds sincere. The ads mentioned that the cover was broken at one hinge, repaired with super glue.
It all looks legit & all of the shipping paperwork is from him. the turntable was as pristine in the advertisement pic, i can recognize the wear paint from the pitch fader in the pictures with the one that i’m receiving. I believe it is the same turntable.
Problem is he’s using an ordinary cardboard box, no fragile sticker attached, not properly wrapped it with the foam sheet. the seller only put the foam sheet on top of the lid, but there is still room for moving parts. hence the cover breaks even further during shipping. the sharp edges from the cover leaves a deep scratch on top end of body & a dent on one side. The tone arm also have some scratches
I have contacted the seller & explain what has happened with the unit. He accept returns but that would be uneconomical. besides 1210 is getting rarer to get, and i have no guarantee i would ever come across one again with a very competitive price incl shipping worldwide.
Ahh ok. When I look at videos on how to set up turntables they show a procedure where using anti skate settings your supposed to get the tone arm to have no pull either inwards or outwards. So when you place the needle down on a blank vinyl it just stays still no matter where you put it. Mine always drags to the middle of the playable area (like djlotus’s signature image) and stays still. Is something broken?
If you set your anti-skate to 0 it drags towards the middle and if you set it to 3 it drags towards the middle? If so, you may need to recalibrate your tonearm, specifically the gimbals screws pivot section. The anti skate spring inside the tonearm could also be set up wrong, but this only be the case if your tonearm was broken down at some point.
Just FYI, a balanced anti-skate is only essential for using your turntable as a hi-fi record player. If you scratch or back cue a lot, having a little pull towards the inside of the record area should not hurt.
I basically get a lot of drag at 0 and less the further i go towards 3 but only to a max of it dragging to the middle of the playable area (not centre of record) and staying still there.
Sounds like nothing too much to worry about then. I just wondered if it was something that i needed to or could fix myself.
Have you ever ‘polished’ the tonearm?
So the poor deck of mine has been dismantled & ready to be sent for painting. I’ve managed to un-stuck the height adjust according to youtube videos.
The tonearm has a minor scratch at the clip area, which could be an ‘eyesore’ if being properly looked at. is it possible to fix this?
If the scratches are deep and can be felt when you run your nail tip on them, then there’s no way of eliminating those scratches. But if they are just swirl marks, then you can polish them using a metal polish cream and better yet, a small buffing cloth and a Dremel.
I have done this many times before so here’s how I do it.
Use plenty of bubble wrap. First secure the tone arm with the bubble wrap and get some styro found on box. Cut them and put them on the sides of the tone arm and tape them. Cut some styro and tape them on all four corners of the deck. Then warp the entire deck with lots of bubble wrap. Then get get a large box that would fit the deck in there. Fill the box with (about 4-5" of peanut styro or crumpled news papers then place the deck on top of it. Now fill the sides of the deck with the same (peanut styro or paper and compress them well. DO the same procedure on top until the deck is properly secured. Tape and seal the box with packing tape.
When shipping 2 decks, you can do the same procedure and put the deck 1 on top of deck 2 but there must be at least 4" of compressed filler (stryo or crumpled paper). Place deck 1 upside down.
Just make sure everything is really compressed- styrofoam works well. If using paper make sure it is really compressed as you don’t want any space when it gets moved during shipping.
I always make sure the tone arm is secure and there is something solid underneath it like cardboard or styrofoam supporting it and the tone arm can’t move. When shipping two I have done the sandwiched thing in the past but am not comfortable with it and wouldn’t do it again- what I’ve done in the past and I would do is just individually box each turntable (the UPS store has boxes that are just big enough for one 1200 with an inch or two on each side that are good for this), then securely pack each one in that size box and then box the two together in a large box with tons of peanuts.
to pack in the small boxes I support the tone arms, wrap in bubble wrap, then try to get some solid styrofoam chunks around the corners and sides so the table can’t move. Additionally I try to get something solid (stacked stryofoam) sitting on top of the platter so when you close the box it pushes down against the platter and the table can’t move- this protects the table/tone arm.
