Dual 1229 turntable help

[drussell]

Originally Posted by Jon A.

One question I have for now, does anyone know what voltage the strobe light runs at? The service manual doesn't mention this. I don't want to select the wrong range on my meter and blow the thing.

On an unknown voltage you should always operate a manual-ranging meter the same way an auto-ranging meter works... Start at the highest voltage range and work your way down to get higher and higher resolution until you get the resolution you need for the accuracy desired. That way you can't blow things up!

In this case, if it's the typical some-sort-of-neon-bulb, the open circuit voltage will likely be in the neighborhood of 100V or possibly more (quite possibly just the AC line with a current limiting resistor), so, depending on your meter, start in whatever range is well above that area (on some meters this will be, say, the 200V range) but it really depends on your particular meter.

Start high and work your way down...
Virtually foolproof unless you accidentally probe >1000V or whatever your meter's absolute maximum is.

[zenith2134]

Those are nice turntables, I fixed one up for a friend not too long ago. It needed a thorough cleaning more than anything, and the end result was that it help speed and sounded pretty good. We mounted an Empire MM cartridge on it and I was surprised at how well it did with some of my more familiar discs.
Dr russell is correct it is a neon bulb I believe. 105V

[Jon A.]

Right on, thanks for the info. That switch arm is under a lot of other moving parts, so I may as well just clean and re-lube every pivot point and bushing. I didn't get a multi-play spindle but I would guess that one record suddenly dropping onto another is hard on them anyway. It plays fine when I give the tone arm a little help moving onto the record.

[zenith2134]

Yeah, I never cared for changers. I tend to really baby my collection. What type of records do you collect mostly? newer ones or vintage?

[Jon A.]

I don't really collect them per se, I just decided to keep a turntable around in case it's needed. It's mostly 8-tracks for me. This Dual is the only high-end unit I've gotten my hands on, so it's definitely worth a rebuild. The only record I had, one supplied by Admiral dealers, had a couple of skips in it so I got rid of it. I kept and displayed the album cover though.

[Electronic M]

One can sometimes get rid of skips by cleaning the album using the wood glue method...Increasing tracking force can sometimes work too.

[Jon A.]

The music sucked anyway, so no loss. I was just using it for testing. The tracking force was on full.