There is nothing like having a good "Elmer" to help you along. No idea who "Elmer" was but seems to be attached to a name of someone to help.
Best, Jerry

Hi everyone!! Picked up the chassis from Darren around 6pm tonight. Darren not only fixed the electrical issue, but went as far as cleaning the face-plate, knobs and the glass. Pretty excited about it and anxious to get it home and back in! Walked in the door 45 minutes later from the ride home. I went to town installing the chassis, hooked up all the wires, re-installed the turntable and put the back on the cab. Fired it up, tuned in a good FM station,... and WOW it really sounds great! I can't thank Darren enough.

I was talking to Darren about the turntable that the albums wouldn't drop and from a picture I posted he said the spindle was not in correctly. I brought the turntable with me when I picked up the chassis and he took care of that also. The man knows his stuff.

Put an album on and bingo,.it drops off the spindle tone arm drops on the album and it works perfect. I had to adjust the tone arm so it dropped closer to the edge of the record. I only had to turn the adjustment screw between a 1/8 of a turn to 1/4 turn and it drops just where it's supposed to now. Everything is working on the console and again it really sounds good.

I spent 2 days cleaning it while the chassis was being fixed. I used paint brushes and a tooth brush to get all the dirt and dust out of all the small cracks and crevasses inside and out. After that I cleaned it carefully with Murphy Oil Soap. All the dirt was removed and the I applied Orange Oil and let it soak in for about 10 minutes or so, then gave it a good wipe down. Here are a few picture of the finished product. It came out fantastic for being 45 years old. Very happy with the results. After Christmas, it's new home will be where the Christmas tree is now.

Darren!! thanks again for all your help. You're the best.

Wow, the cabinet looks fantastic. I can see why you really wanted to get it up and running. Glad to be of service! You did a great job with cleaning the cabinet and doing the turntable tear down/relubricating. Enjoy it. Those consoles marked the beginning of the end of an era; Philips bought Magnavox in 1974 and things went downhill fast, by 1977 they were advertising "decorator stereo" which was really low end parts in photo finished particle board.

Thank you Darren. I'm just happy it was able to be brought back and not buried in a landfill site somewhere. It's been on and playing for over 3 hours now. Tomorrow it's going to be playing all day long. Awesome!!

Wow I came here for some troubleshooting tips and i stumble upon this story. How awesome!

In all honesty though, I just now signed up for some help with a similar situation. I have the top cabinet depicted in the old ad and my left channel is out. I'll be making a full post about my problem too, but my issues seemed so similar to this thread I thought I'd write a post here.

When following this forum, with my cabinet, first thing I did was turn the balance knob. Sharp crackling noises came from my right (working) channel. Alarmed, I turned off the record player, adjusted full right, places in between, and full left. Each time turning the player back on to check for effect. Full left results in a wonderful sound from my right channel and dead silence from the left channel. Any slight on the knob makes the right crackle. Just past half way to the right of the balance knob, the crackling moves to the left channel and the right channel begins to dim..

Any and all advice is very welcome. Is there a good place to get cleaning solution? I'll likely order some as soon as possible.

Thanks in advance,
Jake

You can start by spraying the controls and the speaker selector switch with WD-40. I've found that it does not damage the carbon tracks of the volume, balance and tone pots.

Hi, I am new to this forum and have the same exact problem as the original post. My console is the RCA vtt540 mark 8. I have gone through all of the advice and suggestions from this post. I have attached a couple of pics in hope someone can see something. Any advice is appreciated.

What is the actual problem?

The right channel is not working.

Thanks again to Darren for his suggestions. Same issue with a bad capacitor. Both channels working great.

Hey have this exact same model. The left channel will cut in and out, I've tested a spare speaker at multiple points and determined the wiring is not the issue, so I'm resorting to possibly caps?

It will happen on its own, but it will also cut out if table is slightly bumped.

The drop arm also doesn't move, so how to set that right would be great!

This is for a customer, on a budget, so don't want to pull chassis out unless you guys think caps are next step, and customer is willing to pay

Just wanted to update my progress for anyone experiencing the issue I was.

I end up re-soldering all the wire contacts that were soldered. Cleaned the ones that were pluggable.
Replaced all caps with higher voltage and better quality (Find Gold Nichion where applies)

I also had to clean the needle with contact cleaner, this is what I believed fixed the "skipping" of sound in the left channel.

The caps made this cabinet crystal clear again, honestly better than some modern systems today

have been listening to the the beetles greatest hits, until client comes to pick up

Cheers!