Anybody know about turntables?

[JoshBernstein]

I have a POS sony turntable i got as a gift, and it seems to be turning just a little fast, maybe 35 rpm instead of 33 and a third. I cant seem to find any pitch adjustment on it. The model is lx300usb (shitty i know, but i cant afford a new one). It is belt drive. Is there an easy fix for this?

[xtian]

1. Wrap about 1mm of rubber around the plate's hub, under the belt.

2. Put your variac inline and drop a couple of volts!

[Phil_S]

There should be some sort of inverter to provide constant voltage to the motor. Otherwise, it would turn at a different speed based on line voltage. I'm thinking this is a malfunction or poor calibration. I'd contact Sony and see what they say. Maybe you can get a schematic so you can fix it. I can't imagine there is anything so proprietary in it that they'd refuse an owner.

[LeeMo]

https://esupport.sony.com/US/p/model-ho ... manualsTab

If you are recording into your computer , there are audio editing software programs that can change the pitch and time of digital sound files. You could modify it after recording it.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Make sure it's off pitch before trying to change it.

Time was, you could buy a "strobe disc" for half a buck.

I'll bet you can find one online, you can print out for free. Here's one for ya:

http://www.quadesl.com/pdf/strobe.pdf

You put the disc on the turntable surface and observe with a fluorescent lamp. If it's running the right speed, the dots will stop. If not, they'll creep forward or backward.

Sure would be a hassle to waste time re-engineering your Sony if it's not really out of whack.

[JoshBernstein]

Will give the strobe disk a shot. If it turns out to be fast, ill try the rubber trick. Is there anything specific i could use that wouldnt cause the belt to slip off?

[rp]

It'll be an ac motor so it's pretty hard to control the speed, changing the gearing with a spacer as suggested is the fastest, cheapest (and clever!) I bet very little, in terms of thickness, goes a long way. Linn suggest you tilt the motor a nano hair front or back, iirc there's a grub screw for this - maybe add one on yours?

There's info for building DC motors for the Linn Sondek that you could maybe adapt. If it really is off, and it's a cheap old piece of junk, go to a yard sale or thrift (in a non-hipster) part of the planet and get a better old piece of junk with pitch control. If vinyl is important in your life "buy the cheapest Rega" is the easy answer.

http://www.rega.co.uk/rp1.html

[JazzGuitarGimp]

Have you checked the motor pully to make sure it's clean? If it has a build-up of gunk on it, clean it and recheck the speed.

[Cantplay]

Caps go bad in the power supply,

John

[LeeMo]

I sold stereo in the seventies. Back then the motors were DC servo. They locked to the 60 cycle AC , so they were pretty accurate. I can't believe that a company like Sony would forget the technology in three decades. If so , it makes me believe that the Atlantisians were that far in advance of us. Devo was right.

[Aurora]

This is probably a very simple unit with a small AC synchronous motor... the manual doesn't say.... print the strobe disc and check....
the driving spindle is rather small, so the gear ratio is high,and any bumps in a wrapping on the driver will mulitply, but by all means- give it a try..

[rp]

I sold stereo in the seventies. Back then the motors were DC servo. They locked to the 60 cycle AC , so they were pretty accurate. I can't believe that a company like Sony would forget the technology in three decades. If so , it makes me believe that the Atlantisians were that far in advance of us. Devo was right.

Just marketing. Belt drives won the war by the 80s with all high end decks going that way after the Linn Sondek revolution, the low end decks followed. The belt acts like a vibration absorber, the DC servo direct drive units that came out of Japan and we all remember from our teens injected any motor noise right into the platter, even the finest motors couldn't be cleaned up enough, supposedly. They won out with DJs however, can't do the back & forth scratch thing with a belt drive, so they are still around and in heavy production. I was listening to a Technics 1200 that had a hifi quality arm modded on it and it sounded hifi enough and very solid and rich with fat bass - something about the high torque of a direct drive that fleshes up the sound. If reggae's your thing go mid market old school with the TT.

There been a rediscovery of the old Garrard and Thorens type idler drives too, where a wheel drove against the inside of the platter edge, you'd see these in radio stations, you could release the idler wheel to cue up and they came up to speed very fast - another thing that limits belt drives to home use. Anyway, torque seems to be important to the final sound and has been rediscoverd along with horns and triode SE. Back to the future, up, down and all around. One day there will be an audiophile living on a Mars colony listening to music on a rebuilt Garrard TT, with giant corner horns and triode amps.

[Structo]

I bought a cheap one a couple years back to see if I could play my old records.
In fact I bought an import of Beatles Abbey Road to test it.

What I remember from the past was getting the thing to track without skipping if somebody walked by, let alone dancing.
If you set the weight too high, then you have other problems.
Seems to be the same now.
So it has to have a suspension or isolation from vibration, right?

I remember guys hanging turntables on chains from the ceiling as well as Bose 901 speakers.

[Leo_Gnardo]

So it has to have a suspension or isolation from vibration, right?

I remember guys hanging turntables on chains from the ceiling as well as Bose 901 speakers.

One rarely seen method was to chop a hole in the floor, and build a stack of concrete blocks up from the basement floor, put your turntable on that. For bachelors only: has a very very low WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor.)

There been a rediscovery of the old Garrard and Thorens type idler drives too, where a wheel drove against the inside of the platter edge, you'd see these in radio stations, you could release the idler wheel to cue up and they came up to speed very fast - another thing that limits belt drives to home use. Anyway, torque seems to be important to the final sound and has been rediscoverd along with horns and triode SE.

No "re"discovery here, I've had a 1960-ish Thorens TD-124 since about 1977. It was made to run 24 hours a day in a radio station. Has a 7 pound steel platter - there's torque for you or momentum at least - with a thin aluminum shell that clutches up from the surface for cuing. Unlike the typical Gates 'tables which took a third of a turn to come up to speed, the Thorens is at-speed instantly for radio application. The only problem: it takes about 20 minutes to come up to speed from dead cold. Kind of like an old car. Outfitted with an SME 12 inch arm. Luxury I could afford, back then; call it a lifetime investment.

[Structo]

Is there a typical tracking weight for the needle?