The things for vinyl record decks don't seem to be sensibly available without self-amputation. As long as its a decent deck with some inertia in the platter I'm thinking it may be quite possible to get away with the following functional but odd replacement. Small diameter rubber or silicone cordage is quite easily available, idea is to plat/plait it 3 or 3 pairs at a time into a "flat" belt. But does anyone know if its possible to back-splice platting to form a ring ?, any knots can be on the outside safely. I know from cutting down lorry inner tube rubber to make such belts, which leave a rippled surface from pulling the rubber through a bean-slicer type razor arrangement, but that does not seem to lead to wow/flutter on the playing of records so perhaps platting would work also. I comparison blind-tested one with a HiFi nut one time.
While at it - how do those ballister , bulbous drive pulleys for flat belts work? I know they always centre to the bulgiest bit but intuitively I would have thought they would slide down to a smaller diameter where the back torque would be less as the "gearing" is less there. Intuitively a concave profile rather than convex profile of pulley would seem to lead centralising of a belt.
-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on