Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?

Aigenga, I can tell you this: the main thing that causes speed stability problems is not bad caps but dirty speed selection switches and dirty speed controls. So if you have a variable speed feature this is the first place to look.

Radio Shack makes an excellent contact cleaner that is about as strong as you would want to put on any audio components. A quick shot of that stuff, and work the control back and forth, and its likely that speed stability is restored.

BTW, some machines that lack an external control may well still have an internal control. Figuring out which one it is and cleaning it is a slightly more complex task. At any rate I would not worry about on-board caps so much as I would filter caps in the power supply!

Occasionally certain parts get identified as trouble makers. I've seen a lot of tantalum electrolytics short out over the years. These days if I see them I don't trust them no matter where they are.

"Small ones" does not tell me much. Some electrolytic caps in solid state devices can have values as low as one microfarad and below. Such caps are tiny, but they are nevertheless electrolytic. If they are electrolytic it would seem to me they are subject to aging, leakage, etc. I would change them all, and I did so in my own SP10 MK2. If the term "small ones" refers to film and foil or metallized film capacitors, that is a different story. Film caps are also "small", but they have a very long life and don't really need to be changed unless grossly bad. That's what I think.

A belated response to Henry's question about the complexity of the SP10 Mk3 vs the TT101: There are no on-board electronics in the Mk3 save for the on/off and speed selector switches and wiring thereto and the brake solenoid. All the electronics are housed in the outboard power supply, which is much larger and heavier than that of an SP10 Mk2, for that reason. This arrangement allowed Technics to build the chassis proper such that resonances are minimized. (No hollow cavity or thin-walled structures, etc) And I reckon it also allowed more room on board for the humongous motor. As to what's inside the Mk3 power supply, I deemed it to be so "special" that I did not want to mess around inside it. (As you may know, my Mk3 was acquired in NOS condition.) I simply handed it to Bill Thalmann and let him do the work. Ergo, I don't know what it looks like inside. But the schematic is available on VE.

Thanks for that information Hiho.
I didn't appreciate that the TT-81 didn't have a coreless motor?
Can anyone explain the advantages of one over the other?
Are there still 24 poles so that there are 24 impulses every revolution?

Its worth the risk IMO. Firstly, the depreciation on a vintage TT is way, way less than on a new belt drive TT. You also get a piece of history as well as a functional HiFi component .

Going through life in fear of something breaking down is no way to exist. Look at the stats - chances are things won't go wrong anyway, so why choose to fret about it? You can always buy a spare if you really cant sleep at night.

Long term the vintage DD will be cheaper. Many high end belt drive TT's I can think of have an uber expensive upgrade path that give you the feeling you are missing out unless you keep spending. Not so with some of the substantial and dare I say majestic DD turntables ( in terms of engineering and appearance).

This may not be an advantage for everyone but chances are the wife can probably handle a vintage DD TT more so than the less ergonomic belt drives. And both of you don't need to go cross-eyed every night trying to take a reading from a strobe disc........