I bought a Theta Basic transport last Summer. This ancient thing sounded really good through my modest system and I was VERY happy with it...then the disk drawer stopped working. Theta advised the Transport was older than dirt so no repairs were possible through them, nor any spare parts. They did offer a nice upgrade to a current machine but that was way beyond my means.
So, I hit the internet and found the drawer assembly on the thing was notorious for failure. I tracked down the drive Theta used as a base and then looked for spare parts for that.
Success, I found two gear assemblies in Hong Kong and bought both. They arrived yesterday (with replacement belts for a very reasonable cost) and today I took the beast apart...
I figured it out, removed the entire tray assembly, took that apart, replaced the astoundingly cheesy gear assembly with a new one, put it all together and it worked. Reassembled the deck, reinstalled it in my system with 100% success. My only complaint was with Theta using such a cheap gear in the first place. How expensive would it have been to replace the plastic gear with metal after the problem was known?
I was feeling so successful that I took my Maggie MMG's apart and tightened all the speaker connection internal nuts, which had worked loose over time and cleaned the contacts.
So, a good day!
I bought a Theta Basic transport last Summer. This ancient thing sounded really good through my modest system and I was VERY happy with it...then the disk drawer stopped working. Theta advised the Transport was older than dirt so no repairs were possible through them, nor any spare parts. They did offer a nice upgrade to a current machine but that was way beyond my means.
So, I hit the internet and found the drawer assembly on the thing was notorious for failure. I tracked down the drive Theta used as a base and then looked for spare parts for that.
Success, I found two gear assemblies in Hong Kong and bought both. They arrived yesterday (with replacement belts for a very reasonable cost) and today I took the beast apart...
I figured it out, removed the entire tray assembly, took that apart, replaced the astoundingly cheesy gear assembly with a new one, put it all together and it worked. Reassembled the deck, reinstalled it in my system with 100% success. My only complaint was with Theta using such a cheap gear in the first place. How expensive would it have been to replace the plastic gear with metal after the problem was known?
I was feeling so successful that I took my Maggie MMG's apart and tightened all the speaker connection internal nuts, which had worked loose over time and cleaned the contacts.
So, a good day!