Needle/arm sliding across record?

Hi all,

my housemates' turntable is acting up. When you put a record on, lift the arm and place it on the record, it slides across the whole disc in a few seconds (making some nasty scraping sounds along the way), stops and goes back to the beginning. It's an AKAI AP-D210.

We're not sure if its a problem with the stylus; we (he) tinkered with the weight settings and managed to make it sit on the record without sliding to the end, but the sound is weak and skips and splutters. I believe the weight settings have been messed with, though I hear the stylus might be broken or dirty. It was working fine a few days ago. Is there a 'default' setting we can return it to?

Has anyone experienced anything like this? Any help would be appreciated.

 

Get a magnifying glass and take a long hard look at the stylus. Sounds like the stylus tip is gone.

 

I bet there's no diamond left.

 

There is another longer thread on this same issue fairly recently, don't know the outcome. I also have a vintage Yamaha table with this issue that is random. Good, clean cart, clean vinyl, correct weight and anti skate settings. I am thinking it is a worn anti skate or friction issues in the vertical swivel joint on the arm I am saving it as a winter project. Sometimes the arm will not lower and the cueing dampener does, so my guess is a friction issue on the arm, for my table. Anyhoo, a few things for you to check out.

 

chances are the weight is just totally off. Set the anti skate to zero. Adjust the weight to zero and then micro adjust until the arm floats level....gently tap the headshell so that it bounces a tiny bit and ensure it returns to level. Put them arm back on that rest and set the weight to zero. Retest the level float. and make sure you are set to zero on the counter weight. Point being the counter weight should read zero when the arm floats perfectly level. Adjust the weight to the required specs of the cart and then match the anti skate to the VTF weight - ie 2 and 2. This is as close as you will get without a scale.

best of luck.