ION Classic LP – Cue Lever Stuck

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Fixing Stuck Cue Lever
• Stopping too soon
• Conclusion

Introduction

A friend asked if I would be interested in a turntable that one of his neighbors was donating. I said yes, and not long after, I got this ION Classic LP – with the description that “something is not right” with it.

Upon inspection, the cue lever was stuck pointing towards the back of the turntable. I tried to move it, but it felt fragile and if I’d force, I may risk breaking it.

Fixing Stuck Cue Lever

I needed to open up the turntable and investigate. There are 6 Philips screws in total, and the back comes apart very easily:

Looking at the cue lever, it was indeed stuck:

It has a bend in the bottom part, and that bent was stuck between two plastic posts.

After fiddling with it for a bit, I realized that the two plastic posts are part of the same structure, the mechanism that lifts the arm (or allows it to lower). Making sure that the tonearm was not clamped into the tonearm rest, I started pushing down (my turntable was up-side-down). It was very very stiff, but finally, it gave in. Thankfully, nothing broke down, but it gave in rather abruptly.

I don’t think I even had to open the turn table. With turntable in the normal position, just pull up on the lift mechanism (of course, tonearm has to be unlocked). But you would have to look and decide what is the best approach.

Most likely the cause for the lever to be stuck was that somebody tried to push it backwards (as in lifting the tonearm) while tonearm was locked onto the tonearm rest. The little metallic bend slipped over the tiny 45° angled post and became captive.

Stopping too soon

Turntable had a different problem, was stopping too early – before it even finished the last tune. The adjustment was, with the turntable facing up-side-down, to turn the adjustment screw a quarter turn to the left:

However, one should test different sizes vinyls because, it happened that it stops correctly on a 7in vinyl, but may stops a bit too close to the label on an LP.

Conclusion

Everything else works. I considered replacing the head-shell, but it doesn’t have a counter-weight (nor I looked for a spring).. so I left it as is.