reubensm
Well-Known Member
pls post the pics a.s.a.p, that'll help solve the mystery
As confirmed by Sachu888, the Cosmic Cogram 200 BD is having a Counter Weight, which is missing from my TT.
I have contacted one mechanic here in Mumbai and he checked in his shop for the same, but in vain.
The restoration is stuck up for want of a counter weight.
Kindly suggest ideas to overcome this issue.
Regards,
Suresh
Hi Suresh,
You may like to consider the DIY route mentioned by Asit in his thread on the Scheu turntable. This will not involve DIY on your part but by a kindly and experienced fellow member.
Another option woule to try for a used counterweight from Pandurang, a mechanic from the Opera House area, whose phone number is available on one or more threads. There is another mechanic in the Philips showroom in that area, who deals in used amps and turntables, mostly of Indian make, as a sideline. I'll see if I can hunt it out.
All the best to you in your search.
Thanks Microflex.
Pandurang is my friend and I have checked in his shop for the for the Counterweight but it is not available.
Regards,
Suresh
Hi Suresh,
In that case why don't you explore the DIY route adopted by Asit, as mentioned in his thread on the Scheu?
Regards.
If you can get the approximate weight of the original counter weight and a few pictures, i'm sure you'd be able to get one fabricated at a local machine shop. A good machine shop should be pretty good at replicating old parts. Machine shops who specialize in making components for vintage car restoration would be a good place to start. It is otherwise difficult to get a counterweight as a spare part unless you find someone with a broken table of a similar type. Another consideration would be to go ahead and upgrade the entire tone arm (wonder if your cogram 2000 allows this).
Hi Suresh,
The counterweight is just to balance the weight of the cartridge, I am pretty sure you should be able to find another counter weight, mebbe from some other player which is going to be scrapped or something which fits the thread on your tone arm.
Incase you are unable to find one, then please do let me know on what details you need and I will send them out to you from my TT.
B Rgds,
Raj.
Any luck with this? Did'nt hear from you but I thought I'd mention something interesting, which I remember my father telling me. There's a bit of history here so I apologize for the longish post.
When my father was a kid, his parents (my grandparents) noticed that he liked music and so they bought him a windup gramaphone and some 78rpm records (this would have been in the 1940s). When he reached college, the family had a radio with a phono input and he became interested in listening to his records over the radio as amplified sound was much better than the sound produced by a vibrating diaphram. He removed the heavy arm of the gramaphone and decided to build a custom arm out of wood. A friend gave him a salvaged mono crystal cartridge. Now, here's where the story would interest you. In those days, most of the players used tonearms with heavy tracking weight. Garrard introduced some light weight tonearm options on their changers with the advent of microgroove records and used a counter force (generally a simple spring) for reducing the tracking weight. My father remembered seeing a picture of a broadcast turntable in an american magazine and decided to have his arm counter balanced. He made a small cloth bag and then with a box of weights (from his physics lab), arrived at the correct counter weight required for making his tonearm (with cartridge) float horizontally, in air, over the record. By moving the cloth bad forward and backward on the end of the tone arm, he was able to change the tracking weight. The funny part was that he used a simple jeweller's weighing scale to measure the tracking weight and adjusted his bag of weights at the end of the tone arm till be got a tracking weight of 3 grams. Pretty interesting stuff which I remember from the hi-fi stories which he used to tell me when I was a kid.
Just for the record, later on, he built a fly wheel for this gramaphone to slow it down from 78rpm to 33rpm so that he could play microgroove records (LPs from the American Library in Trivandrum). He had to wind the gramaphone after every track. He used this setup till he got his job with BSNL, after which, he got himself an HMV Cylapso Record player.
Hope you got some idea on how to arrive at the weight appropriate for your DIY fabricated counter balance.
What happened suresh, did you manage to get your counterweight from the fabricator? Very eager to know as these turntables are part of Indian audio heritage and it feels good to know that one is being restored and brought back into active use.
The fabricator has not yet completed his job.
But fortunately, I will be getting a Cosmic Co Gram 2000 counterweight by this Saturday. The TT have been cleaned and it is ready for use. Cartridge has been replaced with Sure M55. Will post the picture by Monday.
Regards,
Suresh