Grinding/static noise from VPI Prime motor - help!

Thanks for the suggestion! There was no vertical play in the motor shaft, but I loosened the brass collar anyway, lubed underneath it while I was at it, pulled the shaft up while pressing down on the collar, and tightened everything back up. Unfortunately the noise is still there, and now there's a little bit of noise even when there's no load on the motor.

I spoke to Mat this morning and he said he's going to ship out a new motor (hopefully) today. I have a Hana Umami Blue on the way so I'm extremely anxious to get this motor noise sorted. 😁

I do hear the same noise when playing 33 RPM records; it's just not as loud. I will give the dental floss a try.

What concerns me about this noise is that it's new and might indicate a problem that will continue to get worse. I have an older recording of a different motor noise that I was able to fix and this new noise was not present at all on that recording.

Again, I very, very much appreciate the help. It seems like the most expedient solution at this point would be to simply swap out the motor, but I can't get in touch with anyone at VPI.

That would be my next course of action. It sounds like that the motor's internal may be defective as the noise appears to be magnetic/electrical and not mechanical. Extracting the motor out of the standalone assembly is better than sending in the whole motor assembly to vpi.

I did try the dental floss suggestion (very clever BTW!) and it didn't make any appreciable difference. At first I thought it had but that was because the belt had jumped to the 33 RPM setting without me noticing.

My suspicion all along was that it was a magnetic/electrical noise of some sort. Now the challenge will be trying to get in touch with someone at VPI...

Next question - how tough is it to remove the motor from the assembly? I see screws on the top of my motor pod but they don't appear to match any of the motor patterns shown on the motors for sale at VPIDirect.com.

Thanks so much for your help!

No, a/c synchronous motors run at their intended speed or not at all.

Have you changed anything recently in your TT setup? Are you running the motor off a power regenerator or any other power conditioner?

How exactly did you lubricate the motor? Under the brass balance collar or on top of the pulley where the spindle exits? Type of lubrication used?

Hi Brf, thanks again for your reply!

I have changed nothing recently except for moving the belt on the pulley from the 33 to 45 RPM setting. I was running the TT through a Furman power conditioner but I also tried plugging it directly into the wall...neither setting made any difference to the noise.

I lubed the motor on top of the pulley, I removed the pulley and lubed the top of the brass balance collar, and also tried to get it as best I could under the balance collar. I'm using VPI's recommended Super Lube light oil (in the small pen) to lubricate the motor. I will remove the motor, hold it on its side, and try to do a better job of getting lube under the collar and see if that helps any.

Also, I cleaned the platter bearing again with alcohol and Q-Tips (in the platter) and then re-lubed with just a pea-sized dollop of Super Lube grease on top of the ball. The platter is spinning very, very smoothly now - I can't imagine that platter drag is contributing to this noise issue.

Any chance my motor is simply starting to fail? What concerns me is that this noise was definitely not there from the beginning. I actually have an older audio recording of the same VPI motor and it was making very minimal noise then. If this is a sign of the motor starting to fail I'd sure like to get it replaced while it's still under warranty!

Just to follow up, I held my motor at an angle so that I could more easily get 2-3 drops of Super Lube oil on the spindle under the brass collar. However, I've been running the motor for about 30 minutes at 45 RPM and there's no change to the noise. :-(