I've just got a dual cs503-1 turntable from ebay. It seems to have a couple of problems though...
Motor works fine, silently and appears to be at the right speeds. When I first installed the turntable it played very well, but then would suddenly produce a loud buzzing through the right speaker. If I remove the cartridge and replace it, it works fine for another little while. Now it doesn't really play at all, what does come out has lots of interferance and the arm appears to want to stick rather than move along the record. It has an original cartridge and I set it up as per the instructions. Is it just duff or would a new stylus or cartridge or even some lubrication help?
This is only the second turntable I have owned so I'm pretty new at this, any help would be appreciated!
Look through the archives of this section of the forum for threads concerning Dual tables. You can find the Dual website in most of the Dual threads and you can then use their troubleshooting pages for assistance.
Possible causes for what you are experiencing are likely to be common to most Dual tables. Contacts oxidize over time in the headshell and tonearm cabling. Sometimes a thorough cleaning solves the problem and on occasion the interconnects from the underside of the table need to be replaced. Determining which is needed in your case is probably beyond the scope of this forum. A competent Dual tech is the better option since the parts are delicate and the typical hobbyist can easily do more damage than good.
Regarding the arm's problems, they could have been caused by your futzing with the noise issues and you might have destroyed the cantilever of the cartidge. Most liekly you have simply not set the arm balance correctly and the arm has insufficient/incorrect tracking force and antiskate adjustment.
Directions for setting up the arm can be found in the archives here and you will need a Dual plastic stylus alignment gauge that should have been included with the table. Setting up a cartridge on a Dual without the correct gauge is all but impossible and at best requires extreme patience and care.
I would contact the seller and make certain they confirm the table was in operational order when it was shipped. As is typical with eBay I would doubt what they tell you. Unless the table arrived at your location in its original shipping box with all relevant packing materials there is a more than slight chance the table has been damaged in shipping.