The Dual CS 5000 is in the house...

[Jim Clark]

but it doesn't work : (

Getting a massive hum and zero music out of the right channel. Could be a lot of reasons for this but I'm not even going to try to get into them right now. Just ordered a Shure M97xE (66.00 delivered) for it and when it comes in I'll take them both over to the shop and have the cart properly installed and have them fix the right channel.

It had some known issues going into it, most notably:
a sticking power button -fixed with cleaning
Difficulty keeping speed - fixed with a new belt
Not too impressive platter -now polished to a high shine
Dull wood plinth - revived with a couple of rounds of Tung Oil.

Just thought I'd keep up the tales of the Duals and the never ending drain on my wallet. Haven't even really thought of telling the wife of the Jolida pre that I'm about to order.

Regards,
jc

[jrhymeammo]

Hey JimC
That deck looks beautiful and timeless. Is it constructed of real wood? If you ever giveup on it, let me know. But that one is truly a keeper.I hope you get it spinning soon. Just make sure you got right and right ground plugged in correctly.
What did you polish it with? Magic Eraser? Man, that thing is an anolog saver for stylus and laminated album covers.

[Woochifer]

Sorry to hear about the teething pains with your new baby.

The CS5000's unfortunately fitted with pretty lousy standard cabling. It's no better than those cheap OEM cables that you see thrown into the box with $20 CD players (then again, almost all vintage turntables use similarly cheap cables). I occasionally run into the same hum issue, and my fix is to either reverse the polarity of the power plug (that works if the hum is in the lower range -- sign of a ground loop), or crimp the RCA plug to make it fit tighter (and tighten up the contacts inside the plug). I plan to eventually switch out the cabling on my CS5000, but I haven't been listening to enough vinyl lately to move it up on my priority expense list.

Once everything's up and running, the CS5000's a pretty decent turntable. The quartz lock speed control and the semi-automatic tonearm are unusual features for a belt-drive turntable. These features are both nice to have and a pain in the butt, because they work great until the belt wears down and then they make your life miserable until you replace the belt. Hope you get a chance to take the deck for a spin soon, and keep us posted!

Hey JimC
That deck looks beautiful and timeless. Is it constructed of real wood? If you ever giveup on it, let me know. But that one is truly a keeper.I hope you get it spinning soon. Just make sure you got right and right ground plugged in correctly.

Makes me now wish that I'd opted for the wood veneer rather than the black finish! But, this was back in 1990, when the black finish was the dominant look for audio components and I wanted to match my other components!

The CS5000's basically a knock-off of the AR turntable with some extra features like the quartz lock speed control, the 78 mode, semi-automatic low mass tone arm (it lifts up at the end of each side, very nice convenience feature), and an adjustable VTA headshell (some CS5000 owners say that the optional non-VTA headshell sounds better). Otherwise, it has the same basic look and uses a similar suspended isolation setup.

For comparison, here's the AR ES-1 turntable ...

[PeruvianSkies]

awesome deck on that sucker! A real beauty! Now a matter of getting it running.

[Jim Clark]

Hey JimC
That deck looks beautiful and timeless. Is it constructed of real wood? If you ever giveup on it, let me know. But that one is truly a keeper.I hope you get it spinning soon. Just make sure you got right and right ground plugged in correctly.
What did you polish it with? Magic Eraser? Man, that thing is an anolog saver for stylus and laminated album covers.

The looks are what drew me to the table in all honesty. And yes, as Wooch pointed out it is wood veneer over MDF. After an aggressive cleaning I hand rubbed 2 coats of Tung Oil. It shined up nicely. It's been suggested to me that I could wax it for additional shine but I'm going to leave it as is and not start down the road of wax build up.

My interest started when Lazarus Short offered me a Dual CS 508 a couple of months ago for 20 bucks when I met him at a headphone shootout with a bunch of headfi members. Actually he offered it to me for free and I offered to pay him. Had the shop put on an AT 71 ELC that I bought new for 17.00 and plugged it into an older Yamaha receiver and really had some fun with it and you know what? It sounds pretty darn good. The thing is ugly though. In my research I saw some pics of the CS 5000 and was smitten. The only other table I saw that I could afford that I thought looked better was a Thorens TD 160 in a custom plinth on sale on Audiogon. It was also 700.00. I was able to get the Dual for 152.00.

I have high hopes for the Shure Cartridge. I looked into an Ortofon Super OM 20 and found one on A-gon but the guy never did respond to my offer to buy. New the cart would have been 149.00. I'm sure it would have been a great match but I've read numerous Dual owners thrilled with the Shure and for 66 bucks nib, it was another no brainer for me.

I've read many glowing reports on this TT however one thing keeps popping up-it's not to be confused with a high end TT. I've read many posts saying that an entry level Rega will better it's performance. IMO though, Rega isn't as beautiful and in this instance given my interest level, this Dual is the only TT that would have made me happy.

"nuff rambling.

jc

[JohnMichael]

Jim next time I am in Lenexa I would love to see the table. I had a ttable once that had an intermittent channel and it was a bad rca plug and I had the shop solder new and better plugs. You might want to try and wiggle the plugs at the rca ends while it is playing to see if the sound comes and goes. This would indicate a bad plug. Also with the removeable headshell the contacts against the headshell are sometimes in need of cleaning so you might want to give them a light spray of contact cleaner. Another thing to check is the leads from the back of the cartridge. Make sure they are not bent in such a way that they might be touching and shorting out the signal for that channel.

[Jim Clark]

Jim next time I am in Lenexa I would love to see the table. I had a ttable once that had an intermittent channel and it was a bad rca plug and I had the shop solder new and better plugs. You might want to try and wiggle the plugs at the rca ends while it is playing to see if the sound comes and goes. This would indicate a bad plug. Also with the removeable headshell the contacts against the headshell are sometimes in need of cleaning so you might want to give them a light spray of contact cleaner. Another thing to check is the leads from the back of the cartridge. Make sure they are not bent in such a way that they might be touching and shorting out the signal for that channel.

You or any AR member are welcome whenever you are around.

It's going to have to go into the shop anyway. Nobody said he'd get me through cartridge set up but I still don't have a scale just yet and want some better RCAs anyway. They take a while on repairs but they seem to know what they're doing.

jc

[dualref]

Humm is a common problem that affects most Dual turntables over time. What happens is that corrosion builds up on the wires in the cartridge holder. Most of the time if you remove the wires from the cartridge and lightly brush the terminals with an emery board and then reconnect the wires the problem usually will go away.If it doesn't, then replace the audio cables from the TT to the amp.
As a previous poster said, while Dual turntables are built for the long term, the cables supplied are cheap, cheap, cheap!

[jrhymeammo]

Wow.....

Hey JC, did you ever get your TT fixed? I'm still admiring your deck. From what I see, it looks better than AR deck Wooch had supplied.

JRA

[emaidel]

I'm delighted with the CS-5000 that I "won" on eBay. I too had no signal in one channel, but after connecting, and then disconnecting the headshell a few times, it stopped. I suspect it was just corrosion or dirt within the tonearm/headshell connection, and now everything works like new.

The only feature that takes a bit of getting used to is that the tonearm will not lower onto the platter unless the quartz locking has kicked in. If you use a record cleaning brush before playing, that will slow down the motor, and if the arm has started to descend just as you begin cleaning, the arm lifts up again, and sometimes, the platter even stops. Moving the tonearm back to the rest position, and then again over the lead-in groove always starts it right up again.

It's a wonderful turntable and I'm completely satisfied with the sound from it. Better than any other turntable I've ever owned (that includes quite a few, but none of the newer units from Rega or others).

What did you pay for it?

[squeegy200]

That is a beautiful table.

[Alec124c41]

Humm is a common problem that affects most Dual turntables over time. What happens is that corrosion builds up on the wires in the cartridge holder. Most of the time if you remove the wires from the cartridge and lightly brush the terminals with an emery board and then reconnect the wires the problem usually will go away.If it doesn't, then replace the audio cables from the TT to the amp.
As a previous poster said, while Dual turntables are built for the long term, the cables supplied are cheap, cheap, cheap!

Don't use emery boards on contacts. A pencil eraser has enough abrasive in it and is far less destructive.
Alec

[cong1872]

My CS5000 play and sound perfectly . Only one problem is .
1./ When turn off play . The head shell jump up on air lound.
2/ When start to play . The head shell down and jumped on the record two time then play.
How I can adjustment for torn arm quiet down and quiet up .
Please help me . Thanks you

[emaidel]

My CS5000 play and sound perfectly . Only one problem is .
1./ When turn off play . The head shell jump up on air lound.
2/ When start to play . The head shell down and jumped on the record two time then play.
How I can adjustment for torn arm quiet down and quiet up .
Please help me . Thanks you

I guess that English is your second language, as this post is a bit difficult to understand. I think you're saying that:

1. The arm lifts abruptly at the end of playing a record
2. The arm lands too fast and hard when starting to play a record

If these are your concerns, there are two possible answers. First, be sure you have your tonearm properly balanced, and with the proper tracking force and anti-skating adjustments. If it's much too heavy, you may experience problems like those described.

Another possible scenario is that the heavy oil used for the damping of the cueing mechanism of your tonearm has leaked out, and the arm no longer "floats" down to the record's surface, but falls abruptly. There's no user fix for this, but there are precautions you can take. When starting to play a record, be sure to have the cueing lever in the "up" position. The arm will not descend onto the record's surface until you lower it yourself, and then just be very careful in doing so.

I hope this answered your questions.

[cong1872]

Thank you very much .