Homebrew Record Player. BSR UA6 deck and RS Components. Stereo Amplifier.

[DMcMahon]

Well that is good progress Ken.

Certainly worth cleaning up those cartridge wires, but not sure that will help though. They should be push on connectors, not sure from the photos if the wires are just directly soldered to the cartridge pins.

What is not good about the sound, i.e. low volume, distorted, noisy, hum etc.

David

[DMcMahon]

As per my Post # 130 while you are tidying up the cartridge connection wires, try and identify the cartridge number and confirm if the red and black wires are correctly connected to the correct pin.

David

[Bigears]

The Red and Black did go to the right pins, but after cleaning and re-soldering no sound from the speakers apart from the the hum , I thing the Cartridge is heavily corroded and the push on connectors are heavy corroded and wont move, its not worth going any further with this Dave thanks again for all your help as I help me a lot. Regards Ken

[Refugee]

It looks like you have almost got far enough to buy a new cartridge.

[DMcMahon]

Sounds like you could do with a new replacement cartridge which sometimes will come with the push on connectors. Apart from the corroded connections causing a potential problem, the cartridge itself may be defective (in terms of giving a good output signal) as referenced in Post 82.

No guarantee though that a replacement cartridge will restore/give good normal sound, especially as the operational status of the homebrew kit was unknown from the beginning.

There are a number of other factors that may contribute to poor sound including :-

1. The low power supply voltage. The audio amplifier IC/chip on the PCB is believed to be a SL403, which requires an 18 volt supply, it may not perform well at the lower voltage. We still do not know what actual AC voltage is arriving at the bridge rectifier from the mains transformer 2 x 6.3V secondary outputs wired in series, request for measurement reference Post 121.

2. If the original braided co-axial cable has been replaced by a non screened cable then hum could result.

3. No system earth connection could result in hum, particularly if the record deck metalwork is not earthed, reference Post 137.

4. The PCB unsoldered 3 pins (one is the input from the power supply) reference Posts 79/80 with Posts 84/86 referencing 6 pins.

5. The smoothing choke maybe be dropping too much voltage and is not really required anyway so best to remove it, reference Post 137.

6. The output transformer which is believed to be there to match the amplifier output impedance of 7.5 Ohms to the 3 Ohm loudspeaker impedance (reference Post 110) if not correctly wired/configured could be an issue. Request for details of the transformer identification number reference Post 113.

7. The 2 wires connecting the volume control to the PCB if swapped over would effectively kill the sound, reference request for confirmation of wiring Post 59.

David