One of of my technic 1210's keeps picking up dust and the sound quality is poor regardless of the needle. It has ruined 2 needles now and and im not sure the problem is. The weights are not too heavy so it cant be that. Any suggestions?

To really be sure, under a microscope to look at the diamiond, but i haven\'t seen one channel oke and one chanel no sound. Then it should allways makes sound , only ckrackling. So be sure your wires are fit by tightening the connection and measure your output till the last connection with your stylus and move your connections a bit , if that\'s allright , then is it a cable or input from something outside your tt. But have you checked it also with first cleaning your needle well and another record and lift each side of the turntable a bit. Sometimes is one dust particle enough, even with a new stylus. Is your output line or phono? O a technics, take the whole needle out and those fours pins you have to lubricate with right stuf ( a tiny bit ) and move them in and out and you havent cheked the connection with your om/concorde, but i think that one pin won\'t come out totally, so pull a bit ( after lubrication ) push them all inside and watch if they come all four back. And pls replace those terrible quality rca cables from technics, they are crap and a nice pair from another brand is only 30 euro a pair, but you needle ain\'t broke for sure and does it work with another unit?.......(still clean and lubricate the stuff).I hear from you.

it must go in to a mixer,if you have then the channel select on the mixer is wrong.

The anti skate adjustment. And if you scratch @ all....move the weight all the way in and take off the little extra one that screws in on the back. Also a great tracking needle is a M44G.

If the cartridge is good and your wiring is good. Then it's either got to be a fault on your amp, or there is a pre-amp in the deck itself faulty. Double check that the amp is working, amps have a pre-amp for record decks, they cause trouble a lot.
If you touch the wires that connect to the cartridge, you should get a buzz on either channel (remove them from the cartridge first). If you don't get a decent buzz, and you know that the amp is working fine, then there's something inside the deck causing the problem. In which case take the bottom off and take a look inside.

Regarding the poor sound quality (and possibly the skipping):
check the needle condition, see if exchanging it with a needle (or the entire pickup head) from a working turntable does any good.

Check the pickup connection pins (contacts on the pickup head and on the end of the wires coming through the arm from the unit), see if there is any dirt or oxydation and clean the contacts if necessary, also check for any damage to the wires.

As for the skipping - a heavily worn needle may affect the sound quality and cause skipping as well - if cahnging the needle (or the pickup head) doesn't make a change, try to realign the weight on the tone arm so that the pickup head will become a bit heavier, this could help somewhat (before you actually try to realign the weight, try to put a small coin or a small weight of some kind on the pickup head while it is playing a record, if the skipping goes away, you need to realign the tone arm weight).

This could also be a problem with the tone arm lifting mechanism (may be obstructed by something or damaged so it won't let the tone arm sit properly onto the record and "grab" the groove).

I just mentioned a few things you might want to check, but don't take anything for granted, the problem may as well be elsewhere in the unit.

regards

Triarcuate

IMO the problem can be solved in 2 ways, either move the counterweight on the back of the arm towards the turning point of the arm ( by just adjusting it 10 - 20 % of an whole spin you can adjust a lot), or buy an other needle which is heavier then this one...

Double check all your cables. The only 2 things that affect sound on the 1200s is the RCA cables and the tonearm. I would first replace the RCA cables to a better quality set.

- OPTiC
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Nope, the circuit boards have nothing to do with transmitting frequencies. There are only 4 items on the Technics 1200 that transmit frequencies...

1) Stylus/Needle
2) Cartridge
3) Tonearm
4) RCA Cables/Leads

If you've already replaced 3 and 4, the problem lies with either 1 or 2. Or the RCA cables you replaced were not done properly, or you used poor quality cables. Double check the work.

- OPTiC.
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Those are just standard phonograph player characteristics in my experience. You'll hear a tap on the deck because there's essentially a live mic ( the needle ) physically coupled with the record on the turntable and the rest of the phonograph player even though they try to dampen the coupling of the turntable as much as possible. The rumbling noise at high gain is because the turntables being driven by a motor via gears or a belt and creates some  vibration, wich is transmitted through the turntable and picked up by the transducer ( needle ), low frequency rumble, just like a recording studio on a busy street may pick up from road vibration/ noise.

Not sure about Mexico, but you can get them online here:

www.1200s.com
www.turntablelab.com
www.pssl.com