Hello everyone,
My aunt recently moved and while packing things up found an Oracle Audio Alexandria Mk I her husband had owned before he passed away. It's been packed in a box for around 15 years, and though it was taken care of excellently while he was alive, it somehow has gotten some wear and tear since being boxed up. She wants to sell it, so I've been looking around trying to find what it'd be worth in its current condition. I'll detail the issues here with pictures in hopes someone can give me an estimate.
The outside appearance is almost perfect. The dustcover has no pits, scratches or dings that I noticed and still has the Oracle logo on top. The problems here are that the screw springs for the suspension are missing their caps, and the record clamp is gone.
The next issue I noticed was the platter on which the records sit was not turning smoothly, and was actually grinding against the surface of the table on the right side due to the suspension being extremely offset. This has marred the surface with a black streak that cannot be cleaned.
After trying to adjust the suspension with the spring screws to no avail, I decided to open up the chassis and see if there was some other problem. I discovered that the cast iron undercarriage has cracked with age over its entire surface, weakening its structure, and this has resulted in warping of the arms that connect to the spring screws and a drooping of everything to the right no matter how the suspension is adjusted. You can see in the picture below how sunken the tone arm is.
Of course this means the turntable is completely non functioning unless the undercarriage is replaced. Since this is the case, I cannot test anything but whether it powers on or not, which it does, though I found out by hacking together a makeshift power supply since the original is also missing.
To summarize, it's missing the spring screw caps, power supply and record clamp and the undercarriage needs to be replaced.
Thank you!
