Rek-O-Kut Turntables - ROK

Son-of-Vere said:

Yep, that's half the fun.
My mini build report can be found here, got buried pretty quick.

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=625169

Still gotta' build a plinth for it yet. But it works, and it has resurrected some bad sounding records.

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Duh, of course! I remember reading that now and contacting you about the arm!

I am going to build a new plinth for my L-34 very soon, and am thinking that I should make it large enough to accommodate two arms. For starters, it will keep the mono-wired Model 160 arm, and I will probably add a stereo arm down the road.

Yea, I just remembered that too!
Too much cough syrup over the last few weeks. I'll be watching to see what you come up with next BC, keep us posted.

Son-of-Vere said:

Yea, I just remembered that too!
Too much cough syrup over the last few weeks. I'll be watching to see what you come up with next BC, keep us posted.

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You betcha.

I have the pulley, platter rim, bearing, and bearing well all cleaned and polished, and the motor grommets have been replaced with fresh new ones.

One of the two idler wheels was sent out yesterday to Ed Crockett for a rebuild (I'll send the second one after this one comes back), and I hope to get started this weekend on the plinth.

I just picked up a B12GH with micro poise arm in beautiful condition. It looks like it was rarely used and still has the tool kit under the platter. The idler rubber is still quite pliant and I'm not sure it even needs to be resurfaced (probably does though).

I plan on making a nice plinth for it sometime in the next couple of months

here she is still sitting on packing foam...

Wow, super-clean! What's that cart?

Seller said it was an Astatic, but also said there was no stylus:scratch2:

Vaughn,

That's a beautiful example. Congratulations. The model number for that cart might be on the top and it might be worth following up on. I don't see a red wire, but it still could be stereo.

Looks like a GE RPX single-play.

Vaughn said:

Seller said it was an Astatic, but also said there was no stylus:scratch2:

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I believe that is an early ADC cartridge.

Steve

targeteye wins! It is an ADC-2A, any good?

All of the ROKs I've owned before the platter mat and rubber on the idler were quite ridgid. The mat and idler tire on this one seem very pliable maybe it was stored in Hugh Hefner's climate controlled stereo vault?

Life in the too fast lane

This is the kind of stuff that happens when ya have some time to kill. I turns out my sensitivity to instrument tuning has been greatly underestimated. My ROK has ran fast on the rubber belt since day 1.
The cloth belt ran slow, however. This tells me the motor pulley has wore out. It looked rusty even after I cleaned it with a polishing compound.
So I felt I couldn't do any further damage to it and decided to lap the pulley down to where the rubber belt worked. The cloth belt rumbled something awful so no loss there. I made a magnetic tape belt and while it worked great, it was slow as well. I had nothing to lose.




Poked a hole in a piece of felt and stuck it over the shaft to keep the filings out of the motor.
Started with 240 grit sandpaper cut in 7mm wide strips, turned the motor on and slowly passed the strips over the pulley. I cleaned the shaft and checked the progress frequently, and it did not take long. I then ran some 1000 grit coated with cutting fluid to polish it a bit. I left it a tic fast as I know it's gonna' wear some.

But it's much closer now and a breath of fresh air. I guess after 2 decades of being around live instrumentation, it was driving me nuts on a subconscious level.

Well done!

Son-of-Vere said:

This is the kind of stuff that happens when ya have some time to kill. I turns out my sensitivity to instrument tuning has been greatly underestimated. My ROK has ran fast on the rubber belt since day 1.
The cloth belt ran slow, however. This tells me the motor pulley has wore out. It looked rusty even after I cleaned it with a polishing compound.
So I felt I couldn't do any further damage to it and decided to lap the pulley down to where the rubber belt worked. The cloth belt rumbled something awful so no loss there. I made a magnetic tape belt and while it worked great, it was slow as well. I had nothing to lose.




Poked a hole in a piece of felt and stuck it over the shaft to keep the filings out of the motor.
Started with 240 grit sandpaper cut in 7mm wide strips, turned the motor on and slowly passed the strips over the pulley. I cleaned the shaft and checked the progress frequently, and it did not take long. I then ran some 1000 grit coated with cutting fluid to polish it a bit. I left it a tic fast as I know it's gonna' wear some.

But it's much closer now and a breath of fresh air. I guess after 2 decades of being around live instrumentation, it was driving me nuts on a subconscious level.

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Wold drive me batty as well. When you carry around a 440 hz A in your head anything off (but close) is painful. Even tempo variance on familiar recordings can get wearying. Well done sorting it out.

So I've joined the fraternity of Rek-O-Kut owners via a model K-33, the kit form of ROK's offerings at the time. (not sure of the year - pic at thread: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?p=8519251#post8519251

This TT will need a bit of restoration, but looks to be so simply engineered, that I'm sure it has the chance of going smoothly enough when I get around to it.

One issue is the tone arm; it is in need of quite a bit of work, and I'm not sure how best to approach it. The aluminum parts should buff out easily enough, I should think, but the tonearm tube is quite corroded. How does one get the arm proper out of its pivot-tube? There are a couple of very small screws, one on either side, and each of them in what appears to be another screw of sorts. Those small screws are either very tight (they haven't budged with what force i've applied), or some other technique is required. Any thoughts?

I'll then do what I can to bring it back to life, knowing that my problems won't end there - the arm was rewired due to messed up cartridge contacts. Cartridge is good, I think. Empire 2000 E/III with an Empire stylus (which will most likely need replacing).

Is there a low-cost, but acceptable replacement arm for this TT? I'd like to maintain its vintage character, and can't entertain thoughts of the high-end stuff.

The plinth looks like it will refinish well. I believe it's a ROK plinth, sold as an option for kit-form buyers.

Ian
SF Bay Area

Ta-DA!

I love how these are so open to plinth modification!

Ian
SF Bay Area

IanMcI said:

I love how these are so open to plinth modification!

Ian
SF Bay Area

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Yeah, the L-34 is especially well-suited for that, since it has such a small footprint.

Looks rock steady, now I know how to build my next one! Just glue up one massive block of wood and route out an opening for the guts. I see many speakers are built along similar builds, just dozens of CNC cut layers of wood glued up.