Had my best repair day in months last Tuesday

I was working on an old Bang & Olufsen turntable from the 1980s, and everything just clicked. The motor was running slow and I tracked it to a dried-up capacitor in the speed control circuit. I swapped it out with a 47uF 25V unit from my parts drawer and the speed locked right on. Has anyone else found that older audio gear is more cooperative than modern stuff?

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2 Comments

ivan8734mo ago

Not to nitpick but 47uF at 25V sounds a bit low for vintage B&O speed control circuits, they usually run closer to 100uF so the original probably was a higher value. Could be why it locked on faster than expected, the smaller cap might be giving it a tighter time constant but it might struggle with load consistency over long sessions. Still a clean fix for sure though.

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hayden_rodriguez4mo ago

Yeah but wouldn't the tighter time constant actually help it hold speed better once it's warmed up? I feel like a bigger cap would just make it sluggish and lag behind when the load changes during playback.

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