Pioneer PL10 Turntable, slight overhaul.

[Sushant Sharma]

Bhaskar Jyoti Talapatra I have already made a post about the Technics on the Technics owners thread. With regard to the Pioneer PL10, I followed this page

Restoring a Pioneer PL-12D Turntable

A blog about mending household items

mr-ives.blogspot.com

This write up was such a great help. It was uncanny how I faced more or less similar issues that the writer has posted photos and described in much detail.
It (Pioneer PL12d) is more or less the same turntable from the inside as the pioneer PL10. Things I did were, the turntable is a spring suspended chassis and the springs have foam inserted inside the springs to dampen, which considering the age of this player 1974-1976, deteriorate and though they held their shape, they were basically just sawdust. Cleaned and inserted new foam inserts.
The center spindle that holds the platter has a screw you loosen to pull it out. It was gummed up and cleaned it with a Q tip and isopropyl alcohol and used sewing machine oil to lube and put back. Applied a thin layer of grease aswell. The tiny ball bearing at the bottom isn't brand new and had some spots on it even after thorough cleaning. It is a very inexpensive and easy to get part which I couldnt replace given that all shops are shut right now. There was a slight sound when the spindle whirled when I powered up the table after putting the spindle back but it settled down very soon thereafter.
Cleaned and lubricated a few of the moving parts other than this.
This turntable is spanking new and shiny inside possibly because it just lay somewhere in a box since 1974, so I opened it up more out of curiosity. Nothing much was required to be done. It has minimal parts when compared to the Technics SlQ3 and I was just happy to just double check things like the speed button, the arm lift lever and the tonearm.

mpw nice idea to replinth, but the Pioneer is in such good shape that I dont feel like changing anything. The Technics just seems like it will look ok with the battle scars and somehow I am thinking they look better with their industrial kind of look and a wood plinth might not look so good. Having said that, I have seen some on the internet that's dont look half bad.

 

[Bhaskar Jyoti Talapatra]

Kudos to your endeavour to breath in a new life to the turntable. Getting a fine technician is not so easy these days, even in the hey day of TT the number of reliable technicians was a few. So it is better to repair it on our own . However, you can give a new life to this TT. Now enjoy your vinyls.
Regards

 

[reubensm]

Turntable repair can be mastered. They are generally precision devices but are easy to repair or service. All that one needs to do is to understand design philosophy, have the right tools and have nimble fingers on a steady hand. Good eye sight also helps but working with spectacles or magnifiers will also work. Another key aspect is to only use the original service manual (mostly available as free downloads) and to use original spares. I have noticed that some skilled mechanics use substitutes or try to repair damaged parts. This is good as long as the technician is skilled enough to evaluate and recalibrate. The merit of mastering the art is that you can keep your turntable running top notch condition without having to worry about outside help.

 

[G401fan]

It might be worth experimenting with removal of the sponge in the four springs. It helps in improving the sound with Thorens suspended TTs, and might also benefit Pioneers. Basically, the sponge-in-spring is a design idea that has long been deemed as flawed. A spring is by itself a damping device, and introducing another in tandem makes it behave oddly.

 

[Sushant Sharma]

Turntable repair can be mastered. They are generally precision devices but are easy to repair or service. All that one needs to do is to understand design philosophy, have the right tools and have nimble fingers on a steady hand. Good eye sight also helps but working with spectacles or magnifiers will also work. Another key aspect is to only use the original service manual (mostly available as free downloads) and to use original spares. I have noticed that some skilled mechanics use substitutes or try to repair damaged parts. This is good as long as the technician is skilled enough to evaluate and recalibrate. The merit of mastering the art is that you can keep your turntable running top notch condition without having to worry about outside help.

I agree Reuben. It feels good to be self reliant with taking care of the turntable.Well, atleast till as long as possible and always handy that you can put a query on the forum and help usually arrives.

 

[Sushant Sharma]

It might be worth experimenting with removal of the sponge in the four springs. It helps in improving the sound with Thorens suspended TTs, and might also benefit Pioneers. Basically, the sponge-in-spring is a design idea that has long been deemed as flawed. A spring is by itself a damping device, and introducing another in tandem makes it behave oddly.

Thanks. I did passingly glance about what you said about foam inserts. Will try and do that aswell. Thanks for the tip, appreciate it.

 

[davidhuge]

Honestly, just keep shopping. Pioneer had a massive downturn in their main line turntable quality, and it started with the PL-2/3/4 - total junk. Ditto for the receivers - went from classics like the SX-1980 to plastic faced toss-away garbage. It was really the US market, which went through a recession and Pioneer simply offered garbage to keep the brand on dealer's shelves.

The others are just as bad. Yet Sony, Technics, Yamaha were still building respectable affordable turntables at the time. If you have an itch for Pioneer, just look for an "S" shape arm.
The last worthwhile affordable generation (PL-100/200/300/400) was worlds better than this schlock and they also were the last of the S arm units. Heck, I had a PL-400 back in the day and it replaced a Dual that failed and was very costly to repair. That Pioneer sounded quite good.

 

[Sushant Sharma]

Honestly, just keep shopping. Pioneer had a massive downturn in their main line turntable quality, and it started with the PL-2/3/4 - total junk. Ditto for the receivers - went from classics like the SX-1980 to plastic faced toss-away garbage. It was really the US market, which went through a recession and Pioneer simply offered garbage to keep the brand on dealer's shelves.

The others are just as bad. Yet Sony, Technics, Yamaha were still building respectable affordable turntables at the time. If you have an itch for Pioneer, just look for an "S" shape arm.
The last worthwhile affordable generation (PL-100/200/300/400) was worlds better than this schlock and they also were the last of the S arm units. Heck, I had a PL-400 back in the day and it replaced a Dual that failed and was very costly to repair. That Pioneer sounded quite good.

Welcome to the forum David and Thanks for the insight. I agree with you about the Pioneer PL10 being a lowly model in the Pioneer stable. It doesn't weigh much and has minimal machinery inside. Will keep an eye out for the models you mentioned, if I am in the market looking again. A Pioneer, that looks really good aesthetically is the Pioneer PL 30L. This PL10 is not my main table but I am enjoying it very much.

It's great to find a machine that is 45 years old and doesn't have a scratch on it and is spanking new.
What is your present rig, if I might ask?

 

[reubensm]

After going through a few myself I can safely say, most of these Pioneers are good at entry level. For serious listening, one would need to look beyond Pioneer in my opinion. If you are looking for a start with something honest, then it’s fine.

 

[Sushant Sharma]

Kudos to your endeavour to breath in a new life to the turntable. Getting a fine technician is not so easy these days, even in the hey day of TT the number of reliable technicians was a few. So it is better to repair it on our own . However, you can give a new life to this TT. Now enjoy your vinyls.
Regards

I agree Bhaskar, especially if you live in a smaller town. Thanks to forum members and also a few videos of refurbishing and repair on the internet, novices like me can attempt small superficial tinkering.

 

[greenhorn]

It might be worth experimenting with removal of the sponge in the four springs. It helps in improving the sound with Thorens suspended TTs, and might also benefit Pioneers. Basically, the sponge-in-spring is a design idea that has long been deemed as flawed. A spring is by itself a damping device, and introducing another in tandem makes it behave oddly.

I would not recommend removing the foam. There are at least 3 people who had oscillating plinths with similar turntables that I personally helped to put the foam back on and cured the skipping.

Granted with concrete floors the chances of floor vibrations are less, but acoustic feedback can still happen. I had a pioneer pl100, which uses rubber dampers over the spring, and was getting a lot of feedback. Putting foam inside reduced it to nearly inaudible levels. I did try without foam too, and it was not an improvement.

 

[Hiten]

My limited personal thinking is Suspended turntable were primarily meant to be used in western countries having wooden floors. That does not mean that on concrete floor it will not be beneficial to have one, but advantages will be less. The suspension springs in turntables are used to filter mechanical vibrations travelling from floor to platter. They are calibrated to filterout certain vibration frequencies and they mainly consists of verticle vibrations. But while doing so (Tuning) the horizontal movements are compromised so sometimes you see suspended turntable while starting ON oscillated in shaky motion and which only damps slowly. There may be some other horizontal vibrations too. So the thinking of inserting soft foam to attenuate this horizontal motion and probably some occasional damping of vibrations not tuned with suspension springs and which are high in amplitude. For ex. some one stomps on floor or some heavy things are droped at distance*. It may also damp somewhat acoustic feedback. Not sure.
These are just lovely fun exercises to be enjoyed tweaking turntables. Because low fq. rumble and vibrations can not be produced by most speakers. As for overtones in low frequency creeping in to audible range they are very low in amplitude and can be sometimes ignored.
Though Pioneers are cheap and probably needs to be upgraded, but I have nice memories of Pioneer PL12. Which I found very musical when my ears were effecient.
* for ex. my small office is on ground floor near a medium sized road which has heavy traffic for some time of the day. I have my PC on wooden table. When some tempo/truck honks or when some road roller is passing by I can feel the vibrations on my table. even though the distance may be say up to more tha 80 to 100 feet.
Regards.

 

[Sushant Sharma]

@greenhorn "I did try without foam and it wasn't an improvement" Thanks for sharing your experience. Appreciate it.

@Hiten "These are just lovely fun exercises to be enjoyed tweaking turntables". My sentiments too. thanks for your insights also.

Personally, I haven't experimented much with the table so far but it hasn't shown any susceptibility to approaching footsteps and there hasn't been any acoustic feedback etc either, it plays very quiet. However, both these surely are areas, that have to be paid heed to if any signs of feedback or rumble etc. show up. Your suggestions are right on the money.

 

[greenhorn]

One thing you could do to improve the sound is to buy some damping (like dynamat) and use it to damp the insides. Hollow plinths are more susceptible to resonance than solid ones

 

[Hiten]

...forgot one thing. Our pioneer TT had in the headshell original gooey small square piece that would go between cartridge and headshell. These helped toning immensely.
Regards