DIY counterweight/replacement

[iamlost]

Hi,
I have just bought my very first turntable at a bootfair. It's an acoustic research EB101 the trouble is the tonearm is missing a counterweight. The arm has a spiral on the end which the counterweight would fit on. So ih ave to questions which hopefully somebody can answer.

Is it possible to buy some kind of replacement counterweight to fit onto this kind of arm?

Is it possible to make a counterweight? If so what physical weight should it be? And are there any guides that could help/

[Stuey]

Hi Lost,

I'd check over at the Vinyl Engine. If you register, there are some manuals you can download:

http://www.vinylengine.com/library/a...ch/eb101.shtml

Check out which arm you have - maybe it's mentioned in one of those manuals; there's one there on arm replacement. Once you've done this, I'd search around using the arm type as a search on Google. It may be difficult to find a counterweight unless the arm is common.

You may get away with a weight from another arm if it has the same bore diameter. Many of these have a spring loaded ball or a bent spring which rides in the spiral groove. Most people reckon you should use a scale to set the tracking weight, but you can get away with using the scale on the weight by balancing the arm level, setting the scale to zero, then dialling in the correct tracking weight. But that's something to explain better once you grab a weight.

Alternatively, you could DIY one depending on your skills...there's a trend to low centre of gravity ones which hang down and have their mass close to the pivot, nowadays, so you could possibly make one better than the original, if possibly uglier!

As for the actual mass to use, you could just hang, say, a few coins taped together from a string looping over the middle of the spiral and when you get close to balancing the arm by adding/removing coins, use small bits of blu tack to add weight until the arm balances. Then weigh the makeshift weight with an accurate scale. There might be better ways, but I just made that up...

Cheers

Stuey

[Panicos K]

Originally posted by iamlost
Hi,
I have just bought my very first turntable at a bootfair. It's an acoustic research EB101 the trouble is the tonearm is missing a counterweight. The arm has a spiral on the end which the counterweight would fit on. So ih ave to questions which hopefully somebody can answer.

Is it possible to buy some kind of replacement counterweight to fit onto this kind of arm?

Is it possible to make a counterweight? If so what physical weight should it be? And are there any guides that could help/

Can you upload a picture of the arm stub?I may be able to help

[Stuey]

I think the original poster really IS lost!