They’re in the back corner, by the tube tester.
That is just way too funny!
I was waxing nostalgic the other evening and explaining to my grown daughter that what is now a major 4-lane intersection with malls and shopping centers as far as the eye can see, used to be a 2-lane blacktop with a 4-way stop and a corner drug store that had a tube tester.
To which she answered, of course, “What’s a tube?”
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Don, you have to get with the times someday. No one uses belt-driven turntables to play music anymore…
They use direct drive turntables. 
Sorry dude all the best turntables were belt driven. Direct drive induces noise.
Not with a good turntable with a nice, heavy platter like an SL1200. The noise is offset by the quick startup time, which is pretty important for stuff like DJing or FM radio.
Meh, I’m probably too young to understand all this ancient technology.
Dude SL1200 is a toy.
I’m talking when I was your age I had a thorens turntable that cost twice as much as my car!
OK so I was young and stupid but man that thing was great.
Back in my day, we didn’t need no belts. Our pants just stayed up by they lonesomes. 'Course, that was back before they invented all that gravity nonsense. Ne’er did see the point of that, what with stuff falling down all the time. Chicken Little was right! Now-a-days you can’t hardly step outside without some new fangled invention going all Newton’s Law Three Laws of Motion on yeh!
Whippersnappers have no respect these days. Three Laws? Feh! I ain’t got no use for laws beyond the One Law: Get Off My Lawn!
Chris, as Sam noted there is a measurable difference in rumble (and arguably wow) between DD and BD, but I’d happily argue that a human couldn’t hear it. Belt-driven was about $150, direct drive twice that, so I put most of the money into the cartridge (needle) instead.
Is waxing nostalgic about outdated technologies a sign of aging?
Oh, Sam: I have a Sony 8-track recording machine downstairs…
My brother recently cleaned up his office/shop, and was trying to give away the record cutting machine…I guess I’m supposed to get the greenkeys teletype, but he said termites got to it’s crate. Oh well.
Is it quad? That would be uber cool!
Jim,
I know someone who might be interested in a lathe. Let me know what the model is and I will pass along the information.
You guys can’t talk about turntables without talking about slipping disks, back cueing, and actual DJ’s. The actual DJ was the guy who was actually turning the turntables and disks. In big cities this was a person from the local musician’s union who got paid union wages. After all, disks were replacing live orchestras.
Two places that rumble would get you into trouble is a wideband power amp with bass reflex speakers in the same room with the turntable. You could watch the pickup arm dance across a record at high listening levels. The other would wreak havoc on transmitters. In AM it would drive the modulation transformer into distortion by saturating the core and on certain FM transmitters would actually pull the modulator off frequency.
We had a pair of SL-1000’s with external power supply. We mounted them in specially designed, damped and isolated housings. They could reach full wow and flutter in one third of a turn and were considered instant start. No need to back cue, and wow and flutter were almost unmeasurable at the time.
I mean for 8-track tape cartridges, of the extinct variety. And no, only 2 tracks at a time (left & right channel).
Goodness, it’s been quite a number of years since I heard the term Quadrophonic.
Don,
There was a little known quad format for the endless loop tape. Everyone was trying to sign on to the quad bandwagon in those days (~1974). Players needed a second pair of playback preamps. In many cases the heads were already multitrack so it was just a matter of switching the head outputs. There was also a quad cassette format and I think Tascam actually experimented with a eight track cassette. It was pretty bad as the smaller track width raised the noise and you couldn’t get the adjacent track crosstalk low enough to be useful. As technology progressed, tape heads had slanted gaps so the alternate tracks were recorded about 30 degrees apart which improved crosstalk. Enter Dolby C and chrome tape and the noise was almost tolerable.
I just saw Pirate Radio at a friends house, and there are a variety of broadcast turntables and antique radio equipment shown in the film. Not all of them were perfect for the period but it was nice to see some of the equipment none the less. The green turntables I believe are Rek O Kut. They were belt drive with a manual shifting handle on the front. You could only change speed while the turntable was running and had a choice of 78, 45, and 33 RPM. The lever switch shown started the turntable and it needed about 1/2 turn to get started (back cue). It also had a big neon light to indicate that the motor was turning. You did not use a high impedance cartridge on these machines as the neon produced considerable noise. Some platters had a depression for 45 RPM records with a large spindle in the depression, while 33 and 78 RPM records were large enough to bridge the depression.
By the way, do not believe the sinking scene as all of that equipment was open frame wiring inside and would have killed anyone standing in the salt water in the booth. Those were the days before OSHA and UL on most broadcast equipment.
http://www.needledoctor.com/Online-Store/Turntable-Belts?gclid=CIvkldaXsKYCFQrt7QodnDKVZA
I usually turn to needledoctor for most of my turntable needs, but it’s good to see there’s competition.
Outdated? Psssh, find me a better way to listen to analog audio that doesn’t involve buying reels of master recordings at ridiculous prices directly from the engineers/bands.
Now if you want to argue that analog is outdated that’s a whole different argument.