Chapter Two: Figuring out what's wrong

After it arrived it was time to unbox it and find out why it was so cheap. because why not I decided to plug it into the wall and see what happens when I press the power button:

// The original Blog-Post has a video here. Here's the alt-text instead: A shaky smartphone video of the record player getting turned on and the tray being ejected. The transparent front flap above the control panel doesn't move out of the way properly and seems broken. There's no platter in the player when the tray ejects. //

As you can see in the Video, it turns on and even ejects the tray. Only the transparent flap on top has some issues. The only other issues on the outside where the huge amount of scuffs all over the shell, especially visible on the glossy part, and a broken piece of plastic behind the front panel.

A photo of the record player looking down on it from the back. The scratches on the plastic window that covers the front half of the device are very visible.

A top-down photo of the broken-off piece of plastic right behind the front panel.

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Time to open it up then. After taking out the nine (!) partially stripped brass screws that hold the bottom panel on I could take a look at the electronics. Thanks Sony for marking them with an arrow.

The loose wires and missing belt in the top left of the machine I already knew about was obviously there. But other than that I couldn't find anything else visibly wrong.

A photo of me lifting away the bottom panel of the record player.

A photo of the area with the missing belt and loose wires which was also shown on the photos from the seller.

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To tackle the low hanging fruit first, I decided to replace the missing belt for the tone arm. After that was in I flipped the device back around and tried to move the arm using the buttons on the front panel.

A photo of the motor-assembly that was missing the belt from a different angle. In the top right is my hand holding tweezers while I'm putting the belt in place.

// The original Blog-Post has a video here. Here's the alt-text instead: A video of the tonearm being moved by pressing the corresponding button on the front panel. //

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