Good deal on a Rega?

[Jac Hawk]

I've just picked up a Planar 3 with an R200 arm and Linn K5 Cart for £50

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The bad bit is that the tonearm anti skate belt has perished, which i'm lead to believe is a common problem on these arms, also there is no earth lead, however i heard that Rega used to wire it in to the phono leads, in any case does anyone know anybody in the north west that can sort this arm out i.e. rewire and new anti skate belt?

[Rothchild]

Nice one, that's a bit of a bargain IMO.

J9 at Audio Origami does the bias belts I believe and can rewire it at the same time (but it will cost considerably more than you paid for the deck)

Clean up the bearing, put a new set of rubber bands on it (motor suspension and drive belt) and see how you get on, you might not need to do the big rewire and belt job at all?

[Jac Hawk]

The belt's buggered and i don't know what sort of state the wiring's in so my thinking is get the arm serviced and sorted, any idea what the cost might be?

[Rothchild]

http://www.audioorigami.co.uk/tone-arm-rewires/

Dunno what he charges for the belt job, you can buy them on ebay for £14 but it's apparently quite a bugger of a job and is well worth doing the rewire at the same time, J9 clearly knows his way round this stuff and as it's one of those sort of jobs you'll only do once the value of putting yourself through the learning curve is limited IMO.

Edit: to be fair the belts are universally buggered it seems although it also appears that the majority have expired whilst set to a generally workable position, so unless you do a lot of antiskate tweaking it may well 'just work' for the large majority of setups.

[walpurgis]

I thought the R200 originally only came supplied on the Planar 2. I rebuilt my R200 and fitted a new bias belt. A bit of a fiddle and it's easy to lose the balls from the races.

[Jac Hawk]

Nice job Geoff, looks fiddly though, i see you've stuck a spacer in to tension the belt, i've seen a photo where a hole has been drilled and a grub screw used to the same effect

[walpurgis]

Yes. The trickiest bit is reassembling the arm and getting the plastic helical guide in the stem in the correct position for the bias to be correct.

[Jac Hawk]

just had a message back from jonny at audio origami, he doesn't do the anti skate belts anymore any ideas?

[walpurgis]

I believe the repair has been done using strong nylon cord in the past. Some serious Googling may provide info.

The alternatives are to use an alternative means of applying bias, like a drop weight maybe. Or of course selling the arm as 'spares or repair', which to be honest, is what I'd do these days. I don't actually like the R200 much.

[Jac Hawk]

hmm i've had my eye on a linn basik LV V, would it be a worthy replacement and would i need to start cutting holes in the plinth?