Unusual vintage turntable

Murray

Well-Known Member
Check out this video on a rather unusual turntable from the early eighties. Would you trust your precious vinyl to this contraption? :laugh:

 
No way No How. When i want a turntable i will stick with the proper and safe ones not this contraption.
 
Probably didn't sound the best but it's reasonably safe, and had linear tracking so it wasn't too unusual.
 
From the :21 mark through :25 in the video above, you see a young lad holding a vinyl lp beside the Sharp VZ-2000. I had one in the 80s, and it was a pretty decent player for the most part. It had a manual release button which was fail safe to remove your lp without any risk of damage whatsoever. Linear tracking needles on both sides, you could cue up "side A", "side B" or "both sides play lp" and just let it go. I was pretty thrilled to have the biggest boom box in town, and the only one which would play cassettes as well as vinyl records. It provided me with a lot of hours of joy. Problem was... when it started getting old and cranky, it was far too complex and expensive to fix. Coincidentally, I finally threw my "VZ-2000" in the dumpster in the summer of (yep, you guessed it) 2000. And I was never so happy as I was to see it go. I went back to a standard direct drive 'Technics by Panasonic' turntable with stroboscope speed adjustment, which I still own today.

I just thought of a new saying: "Novelties are cool when they're new. But they're not tried and true."
 
Here's another system with a turntable built in (looks to be one of those mini systems):

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This was made by Sony. I saw the turntable portion many years ago at a local Sony store.

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The way that Sony supports the record is no different from how that Sharp "drawer" player does--it is suspended only by the label area. It's true that it works, but it will never sound all that good.

It's kind of technical to discuss in a few short sentences, but in my experience, a turntable rig that has a platter with a lot of mass, which also has no resonance to it (it will not "ring" or make anything other than a dull "thud" if knocked), with the record clamped down securely, will help dampen any resonances caused during playback. Or in essence, a massive, "dead" platter will draw that energy away from the stylus/groove interface, reducing noise and distortion and offering up a truer representation of what is in the grooves. Rewording it further--only the stylus tip should be vibrating, not the record.
 
The cheapest-looking turntable I was surprised by the "tank"-like platter weight of (around 7lbs.), was: a DUAL 1019 changer I'd spotted in a junk shop for $25...but, the idler wheels of stuff that old can ruin its whole performance.
Like now: there's a cult over LENCOs...though, I don't see the point in having to fabricate some, $500 BASE for one *just* to get that "magical idler drive sound" (while, knowing, changers had -usually- garbage arms ALSO). Anyway, speaking-of; something like a Lenco: there was a Japanese knockoff of them --- with the name "NEAT" and, they were made by TEAC.
 
Good, classic rim-drive turntables are gaining in popularity, but they are not those cheap changers from the old days. We're talking broadcast-grade Garrard 301s or 401s, for example (not the consumer-grade SynchroLab series, or the ill-fated Zero-100). They are well worth mounting on a solid, well-made plinth after restoration, and paired with a good arm a la SME, Rega, etc.. Lencos? Not quite. They were never really in favor compared to those Garrard models. They could sound good but only after a lot of tweaks, and patience.
 
BTW, I don't think I would ever own one, but it would be neat to have one or two of those old stereo consoles from the 1960s, tube-powered, record player and tape deck, the whole shot. I like the aesthetics of it all--the style, the idea of audio equipment disguised as furniture, the "bachelor pad" appeal even. Just a nostalgic part of a bygone era, I guess. :wink:
 
There's a whole LENCO "cult" on the web, now (Continental Europe and Hong Kong, particularly, obsessed with them!).
BTW, the stereo consoles: the only, truly worthwhile kind were...where, one got a hutch/"lowboy" from a place like BARZILAY and; assembled their own system in it --- say, with, a: Fisher 500C receiver, Ampex 2000 reel to reel, Rek-O-Kut Rondine turntable, and Altec/Electro-Voice/Bozak/etc. raw frame (usually) co-axial speakers built into either end of it (the "cheap" alternative to a -then-$4000- JBL Paragon).
The Magnavox/RCA/Silvertone stuff (which, ironically, "modern ears" use to COMPLAIN about how a record -like none other than, for example, the stereo THE LONELY BULL- has such a cockeyed soundstage "for") would not really have "serious" gadgetry going on in them (ceramic cartridge/heavy tonearm/10wpc amp/etc.).
 
Here is a rather different take on a turntable. This is a Mitsubishi:

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A modern day equivalent, by Pro-Ject.

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I've seen the Sony and can't get beyond thinking it looks like some type of record cleaning brush.
 
A Japan company called "ELP" has been making a laser-pickup turntable since the early-'90s...more "exclusive-looking", certainly, than what a SHARP component would've been.

And it has NO USA repair facility. It requires machine cleaned vinyl. Does a poor job of handling loudly cut vinyl. And also sounds inferior to quite a few nicer vintage turntables and tonearms which can be bought for the shipping to Japan and back for an alignment or repair.
 
I wouldn't worry about getting it repaired--it's something only a tinkerer would buy. (Some of the guys at AK would get into these old units. :wink: )
 
I would never subject good records to a changer, but ADC (BSR) had a novel idea in the Accutrac +6. This turntable was not only programmable to an extent (you could select tracks), it had a unique changer mechanism that would lift the stack of playing records up to within an inch of the stacked records, so they would not have to drop very far. I saw a later version of this at the last major audio show we ever had in this area (which was in the late 1970s).

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Accutrac +6 was a good changer when it worked, too often they did not work. And fiendishly complex. BSR actually built this for ADC. Innovative as can be, performed reasonably well when they worked. P.S. Own a Bogen/Presto Lenco L 70 in my turntable fleet. Mainly needs cleaning, lubrication, and a new idler wheel to replace the ghastly plastic rumbly idler. A fellow Lenco Heaven member lives around a mile and a half from me in Athens.
 
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