Novak's Music Turntable Repair — Local services in San Francisco

A recent move afforded me the opportunity to get my old 1970s era Pioneer PL-516 turntable out of storage. I couldn’t wait to hear some of my favorite old records that I was too cheap to replace with CDs. The turntable had been dormant for about 9 years but had been in steady use prior to that since the day I bought it back in New Jersey from a guy named Eddie who said he was, “Crazy.”

When I lowered the tonearm the auto start feature didn’t engage until about an inch into the record. Also, the auto return mechanism didn’t work, and the tone arm floated across the album indicating the anti-skate was way out of calibration. There was also the little issue I created myself many years ago when I decided not to cut a hole in the wall unit I owned. I spliced a few feet of extra RCA cable into the wires and created a channel drop that would plague me for years.

So, I reached out to Ray and described my issues and he said to come on by. Ray was great! I called him when I got to his location, and he came down and picked up the turntable saving me the hassle of parking. He said it would be about a week to repair. He called me 5 days later and said the unit was fixed. When I picked it up, he again carried it down to my car saving me time and trouble. The unit works great and I’m really happy to have found Ray.

I could have purchased a new turntable for a bit less than the repair cost (Although I felt it was reasonable for the work involved), but I didn’t need a modern turntable with Bluetooth and USB connections to play a few old records from time to time. I checked eBay for a replacement and found a few in the $400-$450 range (the repair cost was substantially lower) which again was too high. I’m so glad I found Ray as he was able to meet every concern I had regarding this repair. If you’ve got an old piece of equipment that you’d like to bring back to life, give Ray Novak a call; you won’t be...

Ray was great. Knowledgeable, pleasant, patient. I would go back to him, in an instant.

Dropped my turntable (Technics SL-1301) off end of day on Sat and picked it up Thurs - faster than the ~1 week we talked about.

It only ended up needing a new stylus, but needed an expert to diagnosis and service what was causing it to stop playing and the tonearm to reject an auto start.

Ray really dug into it. Plays fluidly now. The auto start doesn’t, but Ray got to the root of why: the index plate, which tells the tonearm where to drop, is sticking due to old grease. Because it’s machine pressed into a bushing it’s not possible to remove and clean. Still, he tried to with penetrating oil.

It didn’t work, but I appreciated the effort and knowing the cause. Now it’s a semi-automatic.

He made an optional recommendation for something he noticed, but didn’t feel pertinent. Potentially for down the road.

Highly...

10 stars. Ok so I am not an audiophile or anything, but bought a 1960s Magnovox console for my MCM home. I had to put it in storage during a remodel, and when I brought it back out...it didnt work. I thought I would have to lugg this massive unit to a store somewhere. I called around and yelped around and no brick and mortar would help. Enter Ray.... he walked me through how to take just the turntable out, identified the problem from my poor explanation, was patient with my naive quetsions, and fixed the problem super quick and inexpensively. I reinstalled the turntable super easily and works...