I was going to post the summary of my EMT930 adventure already some time ago but
only now cleared my mind enough.
I've bought a good looking EMT930 set (930, 929, 155st, TSD15vdH) from a Croatian audiophile,
thinking I could refurbish it myself....nothing more illusory in my case.
I've approached it with quite an idiotic enthusiasm, after reading how sturdy EMT's are,idiotically decomposed the deck for cleaning and...got stuck trying to put it back together for several long months.
There was no free lunch, every move was costly, even stupid idler change.
Being mechanically handicapped and retarded when it comes to "mechanical intelligence",
I've gone myself through the nightmares of: platter leveling,axis alignments,motor rattling (sending it to Germany and back), idler reaming (yes, there are 2 slightly different idler axis diameters depending on the age of 930, a thing even hardly known to some EMT servicemen, but of course I had to come across it), learning to measure w&f and trying to get it right. Not to mention minor things like trying to get 0.1mm M5 washers for alignment. Impossible in Barcelona!
After looong months (7 or so) of fight with 0.1% of my invention and the rest the invaluable help of HM, the w&f was still 2x the norm and I finally gave up admitting my failure and decided to send the deck to the pro. It took him 3 months to get it right with unexpected surprises and actually even recalling/learning some of a subtle nuisances of the EMT construction (!) on the way. from bits of info that I got, getting the w&f right was a hard task, impossible to do without a precise test LP in the first place (a special one with brass insert, forget all the eccentric commercial test LP's). The main source seemed to be th washer but that was not all of the w&f story as IIRC the idler has been finally changed too. The arm was another Pandora's box: despite looking like new and passing the blowing tests one axis turned out to be bent and the cart connector needed to be changed (one pin was not contacting). That 155st was wired omitting input transformers and one channel disconnected (the mono I've heard was due to a crosstalk within 155st on the summing resistor on the phone output!) was a minor thing. Thanks goodness the main bearing and the motor were ok (although the acrylic subplatter has some play...which is irrelevant).
TSD15 was another story. I bought it shortly after vdH retip and, backed up by HM's guessing that such a noble cartridge house would not let a crap out of it, I've assumed at least this was ok. Nothing more illusory again. As confirmed by vdH directly, when retipping TSD's they only change the tip, without paying any attention to the shape of suspension, magnets,etc. That is, what they had effectively done on my cart was to put a new, high tech needle on a useless 40yrs old cart...So, the TSD needed a costly EMT rebuilt. I've went for the SPH. When the cart came back it was misstracking and distorting like hell. Back it went to the EMT. After some resistance they've admitted it was not ok and have done a second rebuilt (free of charge of course)....more waiting. Since then it behaves ok.
After getting the deck back, it was the time to work on 155st. I've changed all the elco caps to Elna cerafine and trimpots to modern hermatically closed ones. In the mean time I've managed to burn the power supply series transistor...Then came the 155st calibration...another weeks....Without a *reliable* milivoltmeter and a stable mV signal generator this was like shooting in a dark or spitting against the wind. I'm not sure I've calibrated it 100% ok and I don't care actually as I don't like it's transistor sound anyway and will replace it by a DIY tube unit asap.
On the mechanical side of things would be interesting to process the test signals with Paul R's software to see the change, but it seems that his project is still on hold...
Summarizing, from my very personal and singular experience, refurbishing EMT930 was a nightmare, impossible to do *right* without the appropriate experience and test eq. Most of it has been my mistakes and lack of experience of course, but there were things I'd never discover (like the bent axis in the arm). Honestly and without any advertising plug of any kind intended, in my particular case it would have been cheaper, faster and nicer to buy an already refurbished EMT930 from one of the known sources, getting it repainted as a bonus (a repaint of mine would cost 450Eu and I do have cosmetical issues with some of the prints washed out). On the positive side--I've learned few things ;-) the deck is awesome and was definitely worth the pain.
Things to do next: power controller and a second arm (SME3012).
Cheers,
jk