What is your ultimate Arm and Cart combination?

@JP, sounds like your a busy tonearm repair guy. Ever work on a Fidelity Research FR-54? I have one where the counter weight is jammed. I moved it to one end and it just locked up. I dismantled it as far as I'm comfortable to go.
Anyway, when you dismantle the UA-7045, can you document it here with some pictures? When I was a little kid I took EVERYthing apart if no one was watching me. LOL. Now, I am a bit more cautious. But I'd still like to see good pictures of the bearing arrangements in the trunion block.
Thanks

BillWojo
I also have an FR-54. It’s a lovely tonearm, I really like the matte finish. The counterweight assembly on mine is fine, but the cue lift has some issues. When I got it, the lift would not stay up; it would slowly begin to descend immediately. I just cleaned and refilled the cueing cylinder with 500k cst silicone oil. Now, it stays up for the most part, but frequently does not descend smoothly. It will go down a little, then a little more, etc. Aside from that, the tonearm moves quite a bit outwards when resting on the cueing lift. The rubber on the lift seems to be fairly smooth and shiny, I wonder if some kind of rubber renew product would help with that. I would try sanding it slightly, but that did not work well on a previous table.
 
@mackat, I was given this arm in trade and haven't even mounted it yet. I'd like to try it in the back position on my two arm Victor plinth.
I might try to take the lifter apart again and give it a good cleaning and inspection, look for any scores, burrs or anything that might impede the operation. Assemble it dry and see if it works smoothly. If all looks good, than refill it with the silicone oil. On some I believe you just fill the groove in the piston with the oil. I just looked at mine again, the lift has a screw cap on the bottom, if you fill the chamber it might take forever to drop. With the starting and stopping it may be trying to bleed air bubbles.
Take lots of close up pics and post them here if you get back into it again.
As far as the tonearm moving outwards, do you have a lot of anti skating adjusted in? Might be part of the problem. Try it with no anti skating.

BillWojo
 
@JP, sounds like your a busy tonearm repair guy. Ever work on a Fidelity Research FR-54? I have one where the counter weight is jammed. I moved it to one end and it just locked up. I dismantled it as far as I'm comfortable to go.
Anyway, when you dismantle the UA-7045, can you document it here with some pictures? When I was a little kid I took EVERYthing apart if no one was watching me. LOL. Now, I am a bit more cautious. But I'd still like to see good pictures of the bearing arrangements in the trunion block.
Thanks

BillWojo

Really busy year end for some reason. Also moving some stuff out that needs to be gone through. Just added an NOS EPA-250.
 
@mackat, I was given this arm in trade and haven't even mounted it yet. I'd like to try it in the back position on my two arm Victor plinth.
I might try to take the lifter apart again and give it a good cleaning and inspection, look for any scores, burrs or anything that might impede the operation. Assemble it dry and see if it works smoothly. If all looks good, than refill it with the silicone oil. On some I believe you just fill the groove in the piston with the oil. I just looked at mine again, the lift has a screw cap on the bottom, if you fill the chamber it might take forever to drop. With the starting and stopping it may be trying to bleed air bubbles.
Take lots of close up pics and post them here if you get back into it again.
As far as the tonearm moving outwards, do you have a lot of anti skating adjusted in? Might be part of the problem. Try it with no anti skating.

BillWojo
I appreciate the advice, sorry I’m responding so late. I did clean it with isopropyl alcohol and operate it dry, and that seemed to go okay. I didn’t fill the whole cylinder with oil, only the grooves in the piston. I do believe you are correct regarding it bleeding air bubbles, as there is a noise that suggests that.

The anti-skating hanging weight on this tonearm is fixed at 1.5g, unless you have the second weight which screws into the first one from the bottom. I don’t think the anti-skating is what’s causing the arm to move outwards, as it really slides a good bit on the cueing platform. As much as a whole song, if I remember correctly. The platform seems unusually smooth, so I will have to delve into that a bit further.
 
That's the one.
I bought mine thinking it was the last one, and then I realized that the seller constantly changes the quantity to “last one“. It also shipped from the UK, not Denmark. I wonder how many of them he actually has. I was even thinking that it may be a reproduction, but that would be a pretty niche thing to reproduce. I tried it on my UA-7082 and it screwed in fine, but it seemed to impede somewhat the outward motion of the counterweight assembly. I’ll have to take a closer look at why that is.
 
Same. If it's snug the weight will only move back ~1/3". If I loosen it a bit the weight moves its full throw. The finishes isn't the same as the listing pictures, and the threads are oddly truncated on the nose. I'm pretty sure it's not original.
 
My buddy purchased one from the same guy but decided he didn't need it so I purchased his. Yea, looks like they are not so rare after all and definitely not factory built as I expected after looking at it. No where near the fit and finish as the rest of the tonearm. I haven't tried mine but I suspect I will have the same issue with the counter weight as well.
When I get a chance I'll check mine out and see how much needs to be machined off of the aux weight.
Hmmm, not happy, just did a quick check on mine, hits unless I loosen it just a bit. That tells me that the thread is slightly off center, the centerline of the threaded portion is not on the same centerline as the weight part.
To fix this I will need to chuck a piece of barstock in a lathe, drill and tap a female thread in it and screw the aux weight in tight. At that point I would skim about 0.010 off the diameter and recheck it. Hopefully it's a standard metric thread.

BillWojo
 
I just sent the seller in Denmark a message and welcomed him to this forum to comment on this. I hope he realizes that this is an international forum and a lot of folks read it. I'm sure anyone searching for information on Victor arms will stumble on this thread.
Leaving the aux weight loose isn't a good idea, it was designed to be snugged up.
On another note, looks like the prices of the Victor UA-7045 tonearms on Ebay have about doubled recently. They seem to come and go, the last time a few were listed they were 250 to 300. Still cheap in Japan though. Once these sit on Ebay for a few months they will start coming back down to the older prices I bet.

BillWojo
 
After putting the weight tube where you want it, it snugs up fine. Still annoying that the part is so different from the pictures and not of quality. For $35 and having to deal with international shipping I’m not going to bother pursuing the seller.
 
@JP, did you every dig yourself out from under that pile of tonearm repairs to work with the Victor arm? I'm curious as to what you think of it.
Thanks

BillWojo
 
Nope. Have had around a dozen 'tables through here and half that many arms in the last 45 days or so, and still a bit of a backlog.
 
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