First Dry Run - Ariston RD11 and Bi-Onda Controller

Since I am getting ready for my extended trip for work, I don't have a lot of time to devote to the Bio-Onda controller project.  Even worse is that I am having to pack everything away, which is making my wife very happy of course, but me sad.  Before I packed everything I did want to do a full dry run, that is to connect the controller to the Ariston RD-11 turntable and see everything turning in beautiful harmony as driven by the controller.

But before I could that, I did need to do a little bit of work on the Ariston's motor.  I heard a definite cyclic clicking noise coming from the motor and a bit more motor noise than would be considered normal.  Remember I had bought this turntable from a guy on a local internet classified, I have not done and servicing or reconditioning of the table yet. Suffice it to say for the moment that I did put some time into caring for the motor, after all it has a good 30 or more years of service under it's belt, definitely time for a little TLC!  I will not describe what I did with the motor in this posting, I will reserve that for another post later on.  I did get the motor working fine, much quieter.  So stay tuned for that info at a later date.

I did remount the motor and put the turntable together with the Bi-Onda controller driving the motor fully.  It worked great, sped the platter up no problem, spun nicely.  I tried out the 33.3 rpm and 45 rpm, the acceleration of the motor/platter looked good with the 'basic' values I had programmed before.  Speed was good.  I was especially curious to see how it ran at 45 rpm and was very happy with that.  I did notice that the speed, as per my default setting was a bit slow, but increasing the sine frequency by about 0.3 Hz brought it nicely up to 45 rpm, on the nose.  Me happy.  I did not spin any vinyl though, the table mounts an SME 3009 Improved and I have not set it up yet.  A full turntable reconditioning is slated for this unit, hope to make that into another series.

So far so good.  That was all the time I had for testing, I had to start putting all the equipment neatly and safely away until my return.  Geese, just when it was getting so close and running so well, now I will have to wait to finish it.  Sorry I could not include any pictures, was just too pressed for time.

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