Page 1 of 2 [ 21 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

kraftiekortie
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Feb 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 87,510
Location: Queens, NYC

11 Apr 2014, 4:15 pm

Who remembers playing records on a "record player"--which only played records?



Marky9
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 4 Mar 2013
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,625
Location: USA

11 Apr 2014, 4:27 pm

Yep. First had a 45rpm player that would now be a collectible item. Next was an LP player that was.... wait for it... Stereo ! !



naturalplastic
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Aug 2010
Age: 70
Gender: Male
Posts: 35,189
Location: temperate zone

11 Apr 2014, 4:27 pm

We still have two turntables in the house both hooked up systems.

I do remember "record players". The ones not patched into recievers that stood alone that the children in the family would have to play vinyl disks.



kraftiekortie
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Feb 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 87,510
Location: Queens, NYC

11 Apr 2014, 5:20 pm

In 1967, my older brother got a stand-alone record player for Christmas. He treated it like it was a luxury item.



Prof_Pretorius
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Age: 67
Gender: Male
Posts: 7,520
Location: Hiding in the attic of the Arkham Library

11 Apr 2014, 5:34 pm

Still have one. Not very high tech, though. I once had a turntable with a linear tracking arm and strobe marks on the side of the platter so you could see at a glance that the speed was correct.
Also still have a box full of Pink Floyd vinyl albums.
~sigh~ Those were the days ….


_________________
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. ~Theodore Roethke


Nambo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 31 Aug 2007
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,882
Location: Prussia

11 Apr 2014, 6:41 pm

Our record player in the 1960s was portable, a bit like a Sony Walkman really, except it was the size of a large suitcase that an 8 year old boy could just about lift, and you also needed a house to plug it into as it didnt have batteries, dont know what was portable about it really, apart from the fact it had a handle on the side.

It got really warm and then the valves would smell lovely, you could stack records and a little arm would push the next one down as soon as one stopped playing.

When parents bought a Hi Fi, they gave that old record player to me, even though I didnt have any records.
I took the wires from the arm and attached them to the strings of my Violin hoping I could make an electric Violin, lucky I didnt electrocute myself looking back.



Misslizard
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Jun 2012
Age: 60
Gender: Female
Posts: 20,484
Location: Aux Arcs

11 Apr 2014, 7:00 pm

I had a small one,for my seventh birthday was given a copy of the Beatles Yesterday and Today album,I still have the album and some others,got a better turntable as a teen.I was real anal about anyone touching my vinyl,no fingerprints please!Got in a big fight with my roommate at boarding school because she was stacking the albums on the player,so bad for them.And she didn't check to make sure the needle was clean.


_________________
I am the dust that dances in the light. - Rumi


animalcrackers
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Feb 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,207
Location: Somewhere

11 Apr 2014, 8:40 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
Who remembers playing records on a "record player"--which only played records?


I don't understand....don't all record players only play records?

We still have a record player at my house. It only plays records.


_________________
"Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." -- Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Love transcends all.


MjrMajorMajor
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 15 Jan 2012
Gender: Female
Posts: 8,804

11 Apr 2014, 9:15 pm

I had a turntable/cassette/radio combo which I thought was the coolest. :mrgreen: I had inherited a lot of my parents' records, but my favorite was And Justice For All. I've gone fully digital now, but miss the old album booklets and artwork.



Aprilviolets
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 May 2011
Gender: Female
Posts: 4,138

11 Apr 2014, 9:17 pm

I remember record players I had a really nice one that lasted over 20 years, sadly I couldn't get it fixed when it broke down, I managed to find a stereo that had a turntable on it but it didn't last very long, I have another one now but I don't think its as good as the record player I had.



kraftiekortie
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Feb 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 87,510
Location: Queens, NYC

12 Apr 2014, 12:10 pm

There were record players which also had radios (usually in the form of the console. Some of those were also TV's!). Of course, in the 1970's, stereos became popular, which rendered the stand-alone record players obsolete



auntblabby
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 114,798
Location: the island of defective toy santas

12 Apr 2014, 11:42 pm

growing up in the 60s, my parents had a GE "wildcat" portable record player. it sounded like a large transistor radio. nowadays I have an old dual rim drive job to play 78s with, and a denon DP45f table for everything else. it had a denon dl110 moving coil cartridge until it bit the dust. that was a fine-sounding cartridge on premium vinyl but made everything else sound like crap.



TheBicyclingGuitarist
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 May 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,332

13 Apr 2014, 12:44 am

I remember when learning to play guitar by accompanying the guitar parts on records, I discovered many record players did not actually spin at 33 1/3 rpm as advertised. If they spun faster the notes would be higher pitched and I would have to tighten the strings on the guitar to match, and the opposite if they spun slower. This was a problem with tape players too.

To confuse it even more, there are some songs such as Ticket to Ride by The Beatles and Behind Blue Eyes by The Who that on the original albums even if one had a turntable spinning at exactly the right speed, those songs are like a quarter step or so (not even a half step, one fret apart on a guitar fingerboard) off standard tuning. I forget now which is which but if I recall correctly one of these songs is like a quarter step low and the other is a quarter step high (roughly), so in order to play along with these songs on guitar it is necessary to tune "by ear" to match their tuning. But the other songs on the album were in standard tuning, so I'd have to retune again to play the other songs!

And of course heat would warp records. And records would get scratched. I wore out some albums by playing them over and over again. Sometimes the needle of the turntable would get caught in a scratch and the record would play the same part over and over again until one lifted the needle up and placed it down in the next groove after the scratch that caught it. And tapes wore out too, and sometimes tape machines would eat the tapes! Yeah I know this thread is about record players, but I used tapes more to learn songs than record players after my first few years.


_________________
"When you ride over sharps, you get flats!"--The Bicycling Guitarist, May 13, 2008


Eccles_the_Mighty
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 4 Feb 2014
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 591

13 Apr 2014, 3:23 pm

Looks right.

Gives Denon turntable a spin with one finger.

Yep, still works.


_________________
Eccles


polarity
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 15 Feb 2006
Age: 47
Gender: Female
Posts: 502
Location: PEBKAC

14 Apr 2014, 12:25 pm

I own one of these:

[img][800:640]http://www.majhost.com/gallery/POCKY/Receivers/Sony-HMP-70/sony_hmp-70-ss.jpg[/img]

Although it lives under my bed with a lot of boxes of junk, because I don't own any vinyl to go with it. I inherited it from my grandfather, apparently along with his tendency to only buy the best. Just like him I'm not one to buy the cheap option. Instead I'll take the time to look at a lot of reviews, and spend the money to get something that'll last.

If I could find the space to put it in the living room, I'd probably start buying vinyl, although it would be hooked up to one of these:

Image

which does some trickery to turn stereo into passable 5.1 surround.


_________________
You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence.


stardraigh
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 16 May 2013
Age: 44
Gender: Female
Posts: 744

15 Apr 2014, 1:30 pm

I had one up till I moved to the state where I lived now That was six+ years ago. Gave it to my cousin. As far as I know he still has it and uses it.


_________________
Hell is other people ~ Sartre

My Blog
Deviantart Page