My Dad's old turntable does not work :(

I had it stored for years and now when my son Alex wants to start listening to LP's it is kaputzsky.  
It lights up but the plater is hard to turn.  Still has the rubber belt but after fiddling with it, I pronounce it dead.
 
I saw an Audio-Technica ATLP60 Belt-Drive at Tiger for $80.00.  I have an amp but this one has a USB out anyway.  
Do you think this would be a waste of money?  My old LP's are pretty beat up.  I might have to put a small weight on the arm to keep it in the grove for the really bad LP's.  
 
I might keep looking on CraigsList.  What ever get, I want to be able to replace the cartridge in time.
 
Thanks for any advice you can give.  
 
Rimshot
 

I'd roll the dice on ebay and check here: http://audiokarma.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=28 before buying (so you have some idea what you're getting).
 
I am a fan of 70s stereo gear. If you get one from that era that has been serviced you should be good. They make some new turntables that are good but expensive.
 
J

Re: vinly LPs...  http://www.thebear.org/essays2.html#anchor506008

Karyn
I had my old turn table in storage (back of a cupboard) for years.  I dug it out when we moved house at xmas to see if it still worked.  The belt was fine, the platter turned (at both speeds) but whatever I did I couldn't get it to track the disk propperly.  Just kept skating around on the surface.  I even tried with both sides of the disk (shiney side AND printed side).
Must have been a blunt needle.

Meebee you need a disk with grooves in it?
 
HTH.

Thanks to all for your input.  Much appreciated. 
 
Rimshot

Once you get it working, replace the stylus. Old, worn styluses will not track properly. You should NOT have to put additional weight on the arm. If you do, there is something else going on that needs to be solved. Extra weight will simply make the record wear out sooner.  Just enough weight to keep the stylus needle from skipping is all you want.
 
I have heard about the toothpaste trick...since the paste is actually a polish. I'd be careful about using it because it is a polish and polish is used to remove the surface irregularities to get that polished look..... something you really don't want to do to a record's grooves. Remember, the high notes are very tiny grooves and polish takes them out first.
 
I suggest a gentle cleaning with a soft, lint free cloth and diluted mild dish detergent in plain water. Wipe in the direction of the grooves, not across them. Use a similar cloth to dry the disk completely. This will remove the loose dust and other debris but will not repair the nicks and scratches on the vinyl surface.  Rinse the damp cloth often in clean water.
 
I have a fairly nice JVC direct drive turntable. It has no belts on the drive motor. Very smooth operation and the drive has a speed control with a strobe to indicate the calibrated speed.

Karyn
On a Mono record you shouldn't loose too much, if any, high frequency because the wave shape of the groove will remain the same, but a stereo record encodes the left/right chanels as (left/right) and (up/down) rotated 45 degrees. 

[Even More Pendantic]
I believe you meant to say "lose" right?
[/Even More Pendantic]
 
Just thought I'd polish your reply up a bit without being too abrasive.

Rimshot
I had it stored for years and now when my son Alex wants to start listening to LP's it is kaputzsky.  It lights up but the plater is hard to turn.  Still has the rubber belt but after fiddling with it, I pronounce it dead.
 ...

My Pioneer PL12 lasted 30 years! ... I did buy in 1979 a Stanton EEE stylus (cost like $200 dollars then!) ... and that thing outlasted the turntable, but you could tell that it was suffering.
 
Replaced two belts in that time at $ 6.95 each or something like that.
 
So I sprung some money last year on a new turntable, and this time it was a nice one from Stanton, and will get the new/better cartridge around Christmas ... and in case you don't know the difference, on the old LP's, it was just like the old recording compared to the remastered things these days ... that great stylus and turntable made a difference ... and with my AMT-Heil speakers ... let me tell you what that Tangerine Dream sounded like ... and then Tomita's Firebird Suite ... and the remastered stuff that Edgar Froese has done of the early work, is STILL not half as good as the turntable with a great stylus on it.
 
Digital has its advantages ... but I think that it is STILL too young to do as well as the LP had become 30 years after it became popular and such. In that sense, Digital has another 10 years to go to improve, and it will!
 
But the incredible fidelity ... then ... can not be recreated, and as an example, Steven Wilson's redo of King Crimson's first album, made it so clean and full of Windex and Clorox, that the music lost its taste, value and beauty, for me! Steven did a great job making it sound cleaner ... but not very good job at making it sound better ... and that is a massive difference!

And here is another general interest post from that same thread:
 
I have had a turntable for a very long time since the 70's. A Technics direct drive SL1300 Mk II fitted with its very own very nice arm. SME make the best headshells (super light) and the ultimate pickup for me is the Shure V15 Type III. (one of the finest pickup cartridges ever, tracking at 1 gram or under at 0.75) Ortofon also make an amazing cartridge too called the SL15Q. I have got a rather nice British RIAA equaliser preamp too worth over $1000 back then and it sounds like it too.
 
The last genuine Shure VN35E stylus cost me a cool $500! Enough to buy a decent DAW! The arm is so nice bearing wise if you balance the arm to be floating in the air and you blow a decent puff of air from 15 feet or so from the turntable the arm will respond a second or two later and swing in towards the centre. (standard Hi Fi test, can your arm do that!)
 
I have records that have only been played to this day on that system and they still sound the same now as they did back then. I have got a pristine copy of Dark Side of the Moon which is dead silent in the groove and the music sounds so clear and incredible. No clicks, plops or groove wall noise! Just the music and the music gets very quiet on that album at times too. It is at the other end of the spectrum in terms of noise.
 
Sheffield Labs albums from around the 80's that feature that direct link between a live studio recording and the cutting lathe sound incredible too. You would not believe how transient the record groove can be. Michael Jacksons' 'Thriller' sounds pretty cool too. All those live Miles Davis albums sound incredible as does early electronic music like Kraftwerk or Jean Michelle Jarre, Tangerine Dream. All sound pretty fat on vinyl.
 
I have picked up a copy of John Lennon's 'Double Fantasy' after reading that book 'Lennon' by Tim Riley. I am amazed at how fantastic that record sounds on my turntable. Lennon was pushing the boundaries of the late 70's sound or early 80's sound for sure. It is so funky in parts and the mix sounds killer.
 

Karyn

GuitarhackerI have heard about the toothpaste trick...since the paste is actually a polish. I'd be careful about using it because it is a polish and polish is used to remove the surface irregularities to get that polished look..... something you really don't want to do to a record's grooves. Remember, the high notes are very tiny grooves and polish takes them out first.
 

I'm sorry, I couldn't let this one go...
 
[pedantic]
1)
Toothpaste is an abrasive, not a polish.  Polish is soft and is designed to fill in the microscopic holes in a surface, leaving the surface smooth and shiny.
Abrasive contains particles of "hard" stuff (usually chalk in the case of toothpaste) which is designed to cut away the tops of microscopic lumps and bumps on a surface, leaving it smooth.  The exact opposite of polish.
 
2)
The are only 2 grooves in a record. One on each side.  High notes are not "very tiny gooves".  The single groove waves from side to side following the shape of the audio wave which produced it. The higher the frequency, the faster it waves side to side.
[/pedantic]
 
Cleaning a record with "polish" will slowly fill the grooves with hardened polish. On a Mono record you shouldn't loose too much, if any, high frequency because the wave shape of the groove will remain the same, but a stereo record encodes the left/right chanels as (left/right) and (up/down) rotated 45 degrees.  So the groove varies in depth.
As the groove fills with polish, the small changes in depth due to high frequency will get smoothed out and the high frequency will gradually be lost.
 
Cleaning with an abrasive (toothpaste) will introduce microscopic scratches into the surface of the grooves.  These will be picked up by the needle and reproduced as white noise (hiss).  The more you try to clean the record to remove the hiss, the worse the hiss will become.  In this case, polish would be the antidote...
 
The simple answer to cleaning a record is to use a damp cloth and or a solvent based cleaner that leaves no residue.

1. the difference between an abrasive and a polish is the size of the abrasive particles. Not the hardness of the particles. I just bought a headlight restore kit and it starts with 2000 grit wet disk, moves to 3000 grit wet disk, and then to a polishing compound with even finer grit in a paste. Have you ever used a rock tumbler to polish rocks and gem stones?
 
2. yes there is one groove per side. the sides of the groove have bumps and ridges and the higher the frequency of a passage or note, the closer those ridges and bumps on the sides of the groove tend to be and they are smaller as a result..... any abrasive will start to remove the smallest ones first, and will round them off thereby reducing the high frequency in the content. Use enough of the polish and often enough and you will polish out the larger ones too.
 
Using any sort of polish or abrasive on a vinyl recording will at best degrade the quality and at worse, damage the vinyl worse than it is.
 
Best policy is to handle the vinyl disk with caution... touching only the sides, keeping fingerprints off the surface, stopping the turntable before placing the disk on or removing it from the platter, keeping the disk in the cover and dust sleeve, keeping the platter dust free cleaning it before using it, and not leaving the vinyl disk on the platter when not being played. It's fine to use a damp lint free cloth to clean the disk when necessary.
 
Of course, not too may of us followed these rules for vinyl handling when we were buying and playing vinyl disks.

I have a circa eraly 70's Techniques turntable.
 
Now I'm wondering if it even works.