Garrard zero 100 idler wheel
I put it in the RX 2, pressed play, and waited for the results. I sent him the cartridge, and in a week I had it back, looking as good as new. He told me that he could insert a piece of steel wire to splint the two pieces, then glue it together. I asked Anthony if there was anything he could do. I looked for another cartridge on eBay, but the one I was looking at went from $50 to $145 in the closing minutes! I decided this wasn't the best option, and then tried to bid on an identical turntable, but it too went past $50. I thought that I could replace just the needle, but then it turned out that the needle and cartridge were integrated, and couldn't be separated. The belt was in good shape, but the cantilever (a small piece of aluminum which holds the stylus needle) was broken in half. Then, in a stroke of luck, I found a Beogram RX 2 turntable at a yard sale for $5. I continued to use the Beogram 3000 for some time, usually keeping it in 45RPM mode. I now think that the problem lies not with the belt, but in the speed-control mechanism, which I hope to fix eventually. A few months later, Anthony sent me a custom-made belt that fit perfectly, but the problem remained. Although the belt he sent me was of the right material, it was way too small, and using it had the same effect as the PRBLine belt had. A few months later, Anthony sent me a belt that was supposedly a direct replacement for the belt used by the Beogram 3000. It turned out that the original belt was soft and stretchy, while the PRBLine belt was much stiffer. The first replacement belt I got was a round PRBLine replacement sent to me by Anthony Garza of the (sadly now-defunct) BeoMuse B&O repair shop that should've worked size-wise, but it put too much tension on the mechanism, causing it to go slower than it had with the original belt. At first, I thought the belt was to blame. 45RPM records would play too slow in 45RPM mode unless the speed control knob on the side was pressed in, whereupon the speed returned to 45RPM. When I got it, it had a speed problem 33RPM records would play too slow when the speed/size selector was set to 33RPM mode, but would play fine when set to 45RPM mode. The Beogram 3000 I have is the older version with a normal tonearm, not like the mid '80s Beogram 3000 which had tangential tracking (a feature of their higher-end mid '70s-early '90s turntables, as seen below). In late 2000, I got my first Bang & Olufsen (B&O) turntable, a Beogram 3000. Although not perfect, it was satisfactory, and served me well for years. I've been told that it was one of the worst Garrard turntable models made, with plastic parts that are prone to breakage (none of which have broken for me, BTW), and a tendency to miss the edge of the record when in automatic mode. My first truly working turntable was a Garrard 730m, which needed a new stylus at first, but once it was replaced it worked fairly well. My first turntables were BSR record changers built into '70s Emerson tabletop stereo systems, none of which worked very well. In the few years that I've been listening to records, I've gone through a bunch of turntables. Unlike most people my age, I listen to records far more often than I do CDs, I have a small collection of vinyl (mostly classic rock, but some other types of music as well).