I recently bought my first turntable, a Planar 2 from e-bay. The seller told me that if the platter wasn't spinning freely, it may be because the oil had spilt during delivery, and I should replace it with a few drops of olive oil.
It may have been my imagination but I thought the turntable was running slightly too slowly. So I tried adding some olive oil as suggested, in case this would help... (if I had looked at a few of the earlier threads in this forum I would have thought twice about this...)
Since doing so the problem (if it really existed in the first place) has actually become a lot worse. In general it's noticeably too slow. Sometimes it starts off slow but speeds up a bit, other times it slows down to a halt as the record goes on.
Now I know I can try cleaning out the olive oil and replacing it with a thicker lubricant designed for the purpose. But I think it will be quite fiddly getting the right amount. Does anyone have any advice, and also, is it possible that the oil could be a red herring. E.g. maybe the belt just needs replacing? Although there are no visible signs of wear on it.