Stanton ST150 Turntable Rebuild

[LabRat]

Ladies, Gents and esteemed guests;

I pulled my turntables out of storage the other week to find that after a year and a half of being tucked away, something ridiculous happened to all the plastics and rubber parts. I'm not sure what caused it but it became all sticky and gross. The base and all the buttons were stuffed. It's like that feeling when you pull off a sticker after a long time and all the adhesive is left behind.  

I plugged them in to make sure they still work and so far so good but I didn't want to keep them in this condition. 

After ringing around for parts and such it became increasingly difficult to find anyone who cared. I called the distributer and they said they may have some second hand bits laying around but no bueno so I decided to pull them apart and clean them up myself. Since they were going to be apart, I've decided that I'm going to wrap the faceplate and do the dicer mod!

Quick Note - make sure you keep everything labeled! Take lots of photos and put any parts in labeled zip lock bags so the assembly is much easier

Here's as they were when I pulled them out of storage
 

You might be able to see the difference in the plastic. The shinier side is where I scrapped a bit of the adhesive off, and the matte is the gunk.

So time to dismantle. There's next to no information about these online so it's a guessing game at the moment. The platter pops right off revealing a few screws. Since I'm wrapping the face plate I need to remove the screws (which I've already done around the platter) the other 4 are unnecessary.

There's about 10 screws holding the base together. You can see by the finger prints how stuffed these are

Once the screws are out, you can wiggle the base off. Try not to yank it when doing so. Be gentle, it'll come off

I'm skipping a massive part here but can go int greater detail if requested. It's good to have an old pillow to rest the face plate down on as the hardness of a table could damage the tone arm, buttons or circuitry. To make a long story short, the tone arm isn't clipped in, it's straight wires from the circuit board right through to the carts. This makes it a bit difficult to remove. You'll require a soldering iron here and some basic soldering skills. It's best to melt the solder on the circuit board to remove the wires. I accidentally snapped mine. It's very easy to do as the wires are so thin so be careful.

So this is my current situation. I need to clean all my parts now so it'll be some time before I post updates. Once the parts are cleaned I'll be wrapping the face plate and replacing the decals on the face too. Unfortunately the cleaning product you need to use will remove all text and any kind of printed labels or stickers so you'll need to have these remade if you want to keep them in the future. As I work in the sign and graphics industry this is easy and cheap for me to do myself. I'll probably be doing some custom labels on it rather than replacing the original logos but we'll see how it goes. 

Hopefully in my next update I'll have my colour chosen too 

[Mitch]

Looking forward to the end product!

[LabRat]

So I've ordered the wrap and I did some photoshopping to get an idea of what it may look like. Not sure if I like it but it'll look better in person! I'll keep that a surprise for now.

While I wait for the wrap (there's no stock in WA) I got to cleaning the rest of the parts. Here's a before and after of the start / stop and power cluster.

Before

After

The cleaning products you gotta use will eventually remove the ink on the buttons (as you can see) but there's no way around it and I can live with it tbh. I thought about wrapping the buttons too but it's a pain to get them out and I'm not 100% sure if they'll stick.

More updates to follow one I've wrapped the face and put it back together. I just gotta figure out the colour scheme for the rest of the decal and then it'll be 1 down, 1 to go! 

[LabRat]

Bit of an update. 

I got the colour in and went on to wrap the plate. It definitely does look way better than the photoshopped example I put together. 

Here's the colour draped over the faceplate - it's called matte violet metallic.

Trimmed out

The metallic in it looks amazing as you move around it. Really happy I decided to go this colour

Next on the list;
- There have been suggestions of going gold buttons, which I like the idea of. I'm starting to consider that if I do go the gold I can't leave the platter or the tonearm silver. That'll be a paint job as it's not worth the effort of wrapping. The platter has a black strip running through the guts so I'll probably have to paint it with a brush. I'm not sure what I wanna do yet. Let me know what you reckon...
- I need to remake all the original labels. Rather than doing it exactly as it was from factory, I'm gonna put the Trump'd logo on it and make all the labels in a cool hand written / brushed style font. Thinking they'll be gloss black but I might too with the idea of the gold. We'll see...
- Lastly, reassembly. I'm still a while away from all that, especially if I do all the buttons and stuff gold but I'm hanging out for the end result. Once it's reassembled I can start on the second one.  

[Scottie]

maybe instead of full gold on buttons/tonearm, stick with an easier colour or stock and have gold trim. not sure how easy that'd be though

[LabRat]

16 hours ago, Scottie said:

maybe instead of full gold on buttons/tonearm, stick with an easier colour or stock and have gold trim. not sure how easy that'd be though

I've been thinking about it and I'm not sure I wanna go down that road now. The sample I did looked nice but it's a bit of pissing around. I think I'm gonna skip the gold buttons park and start putting it back together and then I'll play around with different options for the labels

[LabRat]

Here's the last update for the foreseeable future. I say that because I've hit a wall.

Few little things haven't worked out so I'll need to take a minute to try figure it out. 

1) the tonearm is a bit fugged and it'll need replaced. The wires are so thin that when it ripped out it's fucked it along the line somewhere. It's getting harder and harder to find parts for these so this could be the difference between having these as a centre piece and getting them fully functional - but I won't give up!

2) the labels are way too small for my machine to cut out so I need to get them printed. This gives me some creative freedom with how I could get them looking.

Now onto the good part. The turntable is back together! Here it is; 

While I was at it, I gave the F1 a new look. Again, label issues are same same on this one so I'll need to sort something out for this too

Thats all for now. Hopefully the next time I post in here I'll have it fully functioning.   

[Scottie]

they look absolutely shmick 

[LabRat]

cheers matey

[BeatLeSS]

holy shit dude that's epic. both of those look amazing. Well done! 

[Cupe]

Fuck what a project. That looks fucking epic.

All the +rep for progress pics and finished shots!

[LabRat]

On 20/08/2019 at 8:23 PM, Cupe said:

Fuck what a project. That looks fucking epic.

All the +rep for progress pics and finished shots!

Thanks boss.

All the labels have been designed and sent to print. I had this idea for the labels back when I was designing a compression plugin interface but it went a different way so it'll be good to see it come back and play the part. 

I've also been keeping an eye out on gumtree and marketplace to see if any come up that I could use for spare parts. Few people want drug money for them but it's also nice knowing I could possibly get some coin for mine once they're finished.

Update to come soon

[Cupe]

tbh you could def offer this as a service to people. Anyone with scratched up old decks this will give them an epic facelift.

[LabRat]

On 23/08/2019 at 12:51 PM, Cupe said:

tbh you could def offer this as a service to people. Anyone with scratched up old decks this will give them an epic facelift.

Yeah I reckon it would be worth a shot but I need to lear how to not fuck up tonearms first 😂 Might start with the controllers since there's not much too them

[LabRat]

Righty... it was a bit of an effort but I FINALLY got my labels! 

The inspiration for my labels comes from the times where we use to pull off tape and write what our channels on the mixers are or even patch locations on some synths. It came out close enough but because they're so small some of the detail in the tape goes. I had a feeling that would be the case but if you don't try these things you won't really know how it's gonna go.

Anyways, here's the actual final product

and the F1

Pics aren't artistic but I just wanted to grab a few quickly and update.

Still on the hunt for a tonearm / second hand deck for parts and I've pulled the other turntable open and have that ready for cleaning. Hopefully I get a chance to get the second one all sorted out and working but that'll be all on these for a while.  

[BeatLeSS]

Daaaamnnnnn that F1 is boss. 

[LabRat]

19 hours ago, BeatLeSS said:

Daaaamnnnnn that F1 is boss. 

Cheers buddy. Gotta get around to slapping a Trump'd sticker on it then to actually use it! The day job has taken over so my other turntable is in parts all over my work bench at the moment. 

[PhonicAssassin]

My ST-150's were are all sticky too. I believe the antistatic treatment that they used may have been defective.  I had to clean my buttons etc as well.

Will you be replacing the stabiliser feet?  After ten years I reckon mine are ready for an upgrade.

[LabRat]

4 hours ago, PhonicAssassin said:

My ST-150's were are all sticky too. I believe the antistatic treatment that they used may have been defective.  I had to clean my buttons etc as well.

Will you be replacing the stabiliser feet?  After ten years I reckon mine are ready for an upgrade.

Yeah I think it came down to the humidity. Those little sachets you find in boxes probably could've helped these. 

I don't think I'll be doing anything with these anymore if I'm honest. It became way too hard to find a tonearm and it was taking forever to clean the plastics on the second one. I didn't have the time or the patience haha I'm happy I got as far as I did with them but when the time comes I'm just going to buy new ones

[PhonicAssassin]

2 minutes ago, LabRat said:

Yeah I think it came down to the humidity. Those little sachets you find in boxes probably could've helped these. 

I don't think I'll be doing anything with these anymore if I'm honest. It became way too hard to find a tonearm and it was taking forever to clean the plastics on the second one. I didn't have the time or the patience haha I'm happy I got as far as I did with them but when the time comes I'm just going to buy new ones

I'd love a decent excuse to upgrade to the MKII's 

[Cupe]

Holy fuck how did I miss this when it was first posted. This looks dope.

What are you gonna do with them?

[LabRat]

16 hours ago, PhonicAssassin said:

I'd love a decent excuse to upgrade to the MKII's 

I probably shouldn't but I have vinyl stored away that needs to be played!!

 

2 hours ago, Cupe said:

Holy fuck how did I miss this when it was first posted. This looks dope.

What are you gonna do with them?

Right now they're back in storage. It just became too hard to stay on top of and trying to find parts almost turned into a full-time job. There's some local guys that repair turntables and said Stanton used Rane tone arms but I couldn't even find those. To take it to him to get it sorted, he wanted about $350 for each one. I think it would've been worth while if the plastics weren't so gross and they were being used every day still 

[Cupe]

Sad to think about those beautiful decks and stacks of vinyl just chilling in a box

[PhonicAssassin]

2 hours ago, Cupe said:

Sad to think about those beautiful decks and stacks of vinyl just chilling in a box

😭😭😭

#freethevinyl

[LabRat]

So sad 😪

We need more space at home. When we eventually move into something bigger I'm going to build a wall with those IKEA boxes and finally set them free