Cleaning up the Grafonola

A few months back I took it upon myself to finally clean up the Columbia Grafonola that I picked up for my room. I took a handful of photos (and a video) prior to actually cleaning it, as well as during the disassembly process. The arm that holds the needle needed to be sanded down and lubricated in order to fix the skip that was happening (it was getting stuck once the needle reached a certain point and wouldn't advance any further). Watch the video to see the problem and hear some music!

You can kind of notice that everything is covered in a layer of yellow/green dust. That's a result of the felt that the record sits on decaying over the past 100 years or so. In order to get the entire arm assembly out, the plate that the record spins on has to come off, some screws have to come out of the plate below it, and then that plate flips up and can be removed, taking the entire motor assembly with it. The whole assembly is quite fascinating.

Everything is now reassembled and it's sitting in my room ready to play whenever I feel like hearing some old tunes. One of my favorite vintage pieces of furniture/musical devices.