Everything You Need To Know About Turntables, And Phonographs - Part 2

Motors

Since turntables rely on the constant speed of the record to hold proper pitch and tempo of the recording, motors have to be machined to be very accurate, as can be seen with the playback quality of a hand cranked turntable. If you have ever noticed the dots on the side of a turntable platter this is for dialing in the proper pitch of the record. When the platter is spinning the dots will strobe and either move slowly backward or forwards while staring at the spot near the platter light. This will give you a guide of sing a adjusting the pitch (speed) up or down to have the dots strobe in what looks like a static position.

Spindle

The turntable platter rotates on a spindle using a bushing unless it is a direct drive table in which the platter is connected to the motor. The platter can be lifted off the spindle some are attached using a c-clip to prevent the platter from detaching during transport. They are also prone to sticking on the spindle depending the model so be cautious when doing this, and maybe research the maintenance manual for the specific model you are dealing with. Older turntables usually 78's offered a multi disk feature that would hold a stack of records at the top of the spindle and used a mechanism to drop a record on the previous one that finished playing and then played this. The feature caused devastation to the quality of the records being played on it. Probably not a problem to the era because disks were more easily replaceable but now in the 'out of print' vinyl days preserving the condition of a hit has become more of an importance.

Turntable Platters

You can tell a quality platter by its material and weight a really heavy machine alloy platter would be best avoid tables that have plastic platters or poorly machined, warped, or damaged platters.

Record Player Body

Older record players where made with thick quality wood base bodies, but are not made with high composite plastics. Many older turntables sat on a spring bed this is probably what you could consider an early version of anti-skip.

Dust Covers For Turntables

Not all turntables have dust covers, and many will argue that using dust covers will effect the quality of playback while listening to a record. On a positive note they will save your record from dust accumulation and help dust from accumulating on the turntable itself, and we all know the nightmare dust is for the vinyl music culture.

Tuning Your Turntable

If you are an audiophile and see the need for tuning several turntables than you will need to get a jewelers scale as mentioned earlier to adjust your counterweights and if the turntable has anti skating tracking than you need to find a record with a blank side or buy a anti skating adjusting tool. otherwise take your turntable down to your local stereo repair shop and they can service your turntable for a small fee.

continue reading part 2 of this article