Yard Sale finds! - DUAL CS 515 turntable!

Had a nice score a few weekends ago! I decided to try and find a few yard sales even though it was raining. So the first yard sale I came to was held in a family’s garage. I took a quick look and decided to turn around and make my way back to the car when I caught a glimpse of something underneath a bunch of other trinkets.

I found this:

A nice score! Especially since I was only out of the house for maybe 5 minutes and a few miles down the road!

So I got this DUAL CS 515 nice and cheap and even got a box of 25 LP’s to go with it. Nothing spectacular for albums but they were all absolutely mint (as was the turntable). So I got to add a ‘Steve Earle’ lp to my collection (which I previously had but gave to my cousin a while back since I knew he was a huge fan) as well as I got to upgrade my copy of ‘Paul McCartney – give my regards to broadstreet’ and a few other albums.

But the prize was not in the vinyl (even though the price was worth just them) it was in this nice DUAL turntable! I love finding old turntables to fix up and enjoy.

Fortunately there was not much to fix up on this turntable. You can usually tell how much work the table needs by the cosmetics and the albums that the owner has. The albums were absolutely mint and all in plastics, and the turntable still had the 45 adapter and the plastic over the needle. She cared for her stuff and it shows!

So my usual steps when I get a new old turntable like this are to take off the platter and check out the belt (if applicable) and electronics.

The belt on this table was still in great shape, and the electronics were very clean. Just like new!

Regardless, I like to spray the electronics with some deoxit to give it a fresh cleaning. I would usually spray out any dust with an air duster as well, but there was virtually no dust on the inside. So if it is not required, I don’t mess with it!

Besides that I just reinstalled the platter and gave it a good cleaning with soap and water. Plugged it in and hoped for the best.

This table sounds awesome! I really like the ortofon cartridge installed on these old duals. This needle sounds like it has been used very minimal. I know for a fact that it has years of heavy playing left in that needle! I bet she only played each of her 25 albums once each on this table if that!

So it is good to see some of these older tables still around! These were built to last! It would be hard to find a new turntable of this quality these days for less than $250.