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Author Topic: Vinyl!  (Read 8209 times)

pwhodges

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Vinyl!
« on: 20 Jul 2008, 12:00 »

I recently refurbished my turntable; stripped and cleaned the bearings, and suchlike.  It's a Garrard 301, and dates from 1955; I got it secondhand as a student in 1966.  The pickup is an ADC ZLM from 1978, in an ADC ALT-1 arm.

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morca007

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #1 on: 20 Jul 2008, 12:11 »

That thing looks to be in every way superior to my $10 Technics SL-BD27.
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Kai

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #2 on: 20 Jul 2008, 14:22 »

that is such an awesome looking turntable! I am obscenely envious.
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but the music sucks because the keyboards don't have the cold/mechanical sound they had but a wannabe techno sound that it's pathetic for Rammstein standars.

pwhodges

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #3 on: 20 Jul 2008, 15:06 »

That turntable is indeed awesome, but it's not yet very rare (though it's expensive to buy now).  Much more rare is the arm that came with it:



This is an EMI EPU-100, which was designed by EMI as their monitoring pickup when they started to make stereo records in the late 1950s.  A few were sold outside the company, but it was never marketed (unlike Decca's equivalent development), and no revised version was ever made.  It is a unipivot design, and the red thing is a clamp holding a seal that keeps the damping fluid in place when it is not permanently mounted.  You can see the old EMI logo on the top of the pivot.

I used this pickup for some years, and it was very special - somewhat like a Decca, better in some ways but not all; but it needs a special damping material on the cantilever which dries out after a few years and is no longer available.  I have contacted the man who had the last spares for this pickup from EMI, and he has none left, nor has he even got a record of the specification.  So I can never use it again - but it is a marvelous relic of industrial design (especially when polished, which it needs right now).
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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."  (from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"  (from: The Eccentric Family )

imapiratearg

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #4 on: 20 Jul 2008, 15:09 »

I've got this old Sony fully automatic turntable I dug up from my dad's spare room.  It needs a little work, and I need to get a phono preamp before I can use it.  Looks like  this.
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bicostp

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #5 on: 20 Jul 2008, 19:28 »

The best turntable we have is a Sony ps-77. I think my dad bought it at a yard sale in '76 and replaced the needle the following year. It has a changer attachment and can automatically play and stop. It has "Precision Crafted in Great Britain by BSR" around the spindle. Whether that's a good or bad thing, who knows.

The only other one we have is a piece-o-crap Panasonic all-in-one reciever. You can hear the cartridge noise across the room, even with the speakers on, unless you close the lid. :roll:

est

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #6 on: 20 Jul 2008, 19:55 »

At first when I saw this thread I was thinking "oh shit, some kid's just discovered he can still buy vinyl records and we get to listen to him gush" but then I saw who the author was and it suddenly wasn't a lame idea any more.

Paul, did you have to re-jig/repair the electrics on it or anything?  It looks like a pretty sturdy turntable.
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Catacombs

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #7 on: 20 Jul 2008, 19:59 »

I've been meaning to clean up my parent's old turn table.  I think in it's hey-day it was pretty good, but i dunno at the moment.  Tomorrow i'll post pictures of it, and i'll probably have some questions considering i know nothing about repairing electronics and less about turntables  :-o
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Ballard

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #8 on: 20 Jul 2008, 20:35 »

My dad was an audiophile and devoted much of his life to collecting phonograph and turntable records (I'm a bit confused as to which terms are appropriate here because it seems phonograph/gramophone/turntable are all interchangeable now.)

He left me a Technics SL-1200MK2 turntable as well as a mid-to-late 19th century phonograph. The latter has a particularly colorful history as he found and consequently smuggled it out of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. Before he discovered it, a housewife in a communal apartment in St. Petersburg used it as a kitchen counter, chopping onions and other crap on it in her ignorance of what she possessed. He later had it restored to peak condition.

We also have a priceless collection of phonograph records, mostly of the opera variety, as well as a sizable modern vinyl collection.
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imapiratearg

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #9 on: 20 Jul 2008, 20:44 »

Damn, Ballard, that's one nice-looking turntable.
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pinkpiche

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #10 on: 21 Jul 2008, 01:28 »

Technics is generally the bomb, but I would really like one of these:



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pwhodges

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #11 on: 21 Jul 2008, 01:32 »

did you have to re-jig/repair the electrics on it or anything?  It looks like a pretty sturdy turntable.

Sturdy - yes!  It weighs 16lb - 6lb of that is the platter.  The only electrics is the motor wiring and a capacitor across the switch to supress sparking, which didn't need replacement.

I used the unit until the mid-1970s, when I retired it because it was unsuitable to have around with small children.  I got a B&O, which was excellent, but by the time the children had left home, it was falling apart - plastics just don't last like metal! - and the bearing had got noisy as well.  However, by then the Garrard's bearings were drying out, and eventually I had to strip it right down - not just the main bearing (which is large, and therefore quite easy), but also the motor bearings.  The motor had to be taken apart to reach its bearings, and reassembling it and centering the drive pully on the top of its shaft were the trickiest jobs.  When the main bearing is freshly topped up with oil (I need to do that every couple of years), it is not quite silent, but it's still quiet enough for me to hear the rumble recorded on many LPs, so I can't complain too much.

When I left uni, I worked at the BBC for a time as a sound engineer in radio.  Many of the turntables in use there at that time were built round a customised version of this deck.
« Last Edit: 21 Jul 2008, 04:56 by pwhodges »
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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."  (from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"  (from: The Eccentric Family )

David_Dovey

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #12 on: 21 Jul 2008, 05:36 »

pinkpice, that turntable you posted is fucking gorgeous... What is it?

I just put the deposit down on 2xNumark TT-200 decks, a mixer, Serato Scratch Live and some Tapco monitors.
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Ballard

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #13 on: 21 Jul 2008, 11:24 »

I found out in researching my previous post that the SL-1200MK2 has long been the industry standard amongst DJs. This leads me to wish I had two of these babies, as I've always been interested in DJing.

Standalone, they're not terribly expensive but it'd put a big dent in my guitar gear money purchasing another MK2 and a mixer.
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pinkpiche

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #14 on: 22 Jul 2008, 00:09 »

pinkpice, that turntable you posted is fucking gorgeous... What is it?

It's a danish made Rega P3. All their models are absolutely delicious, but this is the one I'm most likely to scrap up the money for.
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Bayley

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #15 on: 22 Jul 2008, 13:55 »

...i just have some audio-technica i bought from best buy. and it broke in the past month or so, and i really miss listening to my albums. i still find it refreshing how much different (full, warm) music from the vinyl era sounds on original vinyl as opposed to recent, remastered digital versions.
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thedavo

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #16 on: 02 Aug 2008, 13:08 »

the Rega decks are really good, solid build and good sound to them.

I was using a Project RPM5 up until Christmas last year, when a customer of mine was selling his Linn Sondek LP12 (Ittok LVII arm, Valhalla power supply, and a Dynavector DV20XH cartridge - recently serviced aswell which saves me getting one of my colleagues to do that). So i now have that.
Still got the Project aswell...

I've got to get a new power supply for my linn though, at the moment it only plays 33s - it's how the Valhalla was designed. And i'm not paying the asking price for the Lingo (UK retail = £1000!), unless i came into a large amount of money somehow...
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s42

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Re: Vinyl!
« Reply #17 on: 02 Aug 2008, 13:25 »

Jesus that Rega turntable is pretty.
Me, I just listen to Vinyl on my B&O Beomaster 1900 Stereo Sound System which I recently inherited off my Godfather. I'm far too poor for nice things like Rega decks.

PW hodges, I am in awe of that turntable. That is so cool.
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