How many of you are old enough to know what these are for?

[Kelemvor]

I think this is the one that I had growing up...

 

[seemingly random]

Back in the day when they were quality they were called "The Fisher".

Cassettes were at the top with the Nakamichi Dragon and quality worked its way down from there.
...

I could never rationalize the price of a nak but did have the top pioneer.

Ha, just remembered reel to reel decks. I believe crown and tandberg were popular. I had a roberts deck that also had an 8-track recorder. Holy shit...

 

[Perknose]

I thought it was Long Play but I suspect you're going to say something else.

I was wondering about the spindle diameter of 78s...

Long Playing, yup. The slower speed and relatively large size gave us the "album" format of ~ 25-40 minutes of music a side -- huge in it's time.

I miss full scale album art and liner notes, not to mention the incredible utility of a double album jacket cover for cleaning your pot.

78's had the same small spindle hole as an LP.

Has anyone here ever seen/possessed a 16 and 2/3 record? I guess I could go google them.

 

[MotF Bane]

78's were generally about the size of 33 and 1/3 LP's, just a little smaller.

Yup, there was a 16 and 2/3 speed, but I can't recall ever seeing such a record.

Btw, w/o googling, can anyone say what LP stood for . . . and why? :hmm:

Large Platter?

 

[lxskllr]

Has anyone here ever seen/possessed a 16 and 2/3 record? I guess I could go google them.

Never, and I used to scour antique shops looking for old records when I was younger.

Edit:
I'm sure you've looked it up already, but...

A number of recordings were pressed at 16⅔ rpm (usually a 7-inch disc, visually identical to a 45 rpm single). Peter Goldmark, the man who developed the 33⅓ rpm record, developed the Highway Hi-Fi 16⅔ rpm record to be played in Chrysler automobiles, but poor performance of the system and weak implementation by Chrysler and Columbia led to the demise of the 16⅔ rpm records. Subsequently, the 16⅔ rpm speed was used for radio transcription discs or narrated publications for the blind and visually impaired, and were never widely commercially available, although it was common to see new turntable models with a 16 rpm speed setting produced as late as the 1970s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramophone_record

 

[Fritzo]

Wow---weird! I just found a box of those in my basement last week I even found a 45 of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song/Hey Hey What Can I Do to use it on

 

[seemingly random]

Had one of the famous Stanton 681eee cartridges (phono needles) back in the day -- it came in a jewel-like box with a "gold" mini screwdriver and a filled out in ink and personally signed final test spec sheet showing it performed in real life up to the specs they claimed.

Old school, to say the least, although even by the time I had it Shure was starting to relentlessly eat their lunch.

What was the popular model # of the shure cartridge that was ~$50-75 and started with M? I used to occasionally take it to an audio store that would have a free clinic to align the cartridge on your turntable. Amazing that I could recite all these models and specs effortlessly back then...

 

[Rubycon]

We used to play sound effects records at 16.666 RPM on the Califone to get creepy sounds on Halloween night. :$

LP was for Long Play.

I could not tell you how many times I'd wake up to crackling noise in the wee hours from an LP that I was listening to was finished and the needle was just riding the end of the record. We used no rumble filters and had these large Utah loudspeakers with 15" coaxial drivers. If a truck drove by and the vibration was picked up by the needle the subsonic material could make the woofer strike the back of the tweeter in rapid succession like machine gun fire! What a sound to wake up to!

As rotational speed decreased so did fidelity. Just as higher tape speed allows more information to be stored as well as higher bit quantization and sampling frequencies in the digital domain allow for better fidelity.

This talk of records could not be without StaticMaster brushes! Best of all is where the ion streams came from! Those packs had Polonium in them and the strong alpha would set a Civil Defense GM counter off like crazy. I scared many folks with this tactic although in its own was quite harmless.

Anyone have those Flexi records? They were square, flexible records in books. As recent as the '90s Thompson was sending those out as demos for their Vocal Eliminator.

 

[Platypus]

got a few sitting right here

 

[seemingly random]

Long Playing, yup. The slower speed and relatively large size gave us the "album" format of ~ 25-40 minutes of music a side -- huge in it's time.

I miss full scale album art and liner notes, not to mention the incredible utility of a double album jacket cover for cleaning your pot.

78's had the same small spindle hole as an LP.

Has anyone here ever seen/possessed a 16 and 2/3 record? I guess I could go google them.

Ha. Can't tell you how many times I've opened a double jacket and seeds have fallen out. But it worked out nicely during dry times.

Weekend nights were often spent at the record shop near the university. Records were $3-5. There was a head shop next door. And, conveniently, one of the best sub shops I've ever been to close by.

 

[Rubycon]

I think this is the one that I had growing up...

That's a knock off - the Mattel ones ran on a single 9V battery.

 

[skyking]

Had one of the famous Stanton 681eee cartridges (phono needles) back in the day -- it came in a jewel-like box with a "gold" mini screwdriver and a filled out in ink and personally signed final test spec sheet showing it performed in real life up to the specs they claimed.

Old school, to say the least, although even by the time I had it Shure was starting to relentlessly eat their lunch.

I have that box and certs and tools, everything but the cartridge itself
I'll upload a pic or two later today. The box looks to be mahogany, talk about a cool stash!

 

[Fritzo]

Never, and I used to scour antique shops looking for old records when I was younger.

I had a couple of 16 2/3 jazz albums. They were super thick- I'm talking about 1/4" thick. I seem to remember them having a very long play time per side as well.

Some trivia: Sometime around the mid 50's, they actually tried putting record players in cars (like CD players today). When you took a test drive, the dealer would give you an album to play to tell you the features of the car (the dealer didn't drive with you). These dealer records are very collectible to car buffs today. These records played at 16 2/3 because it was more tolerant to bumps.

 

[lxskllr]

I had a couple of 16 2/3 jazz albums. They were super thick- I'm talking about 1/4" thick. I seem to remember them having a very long play time per side as well.

I'd still love to get a Victrola. They're surprisingly affordable, and it would be super cool having one in the living room. I'd go shopping today if I had the extra money to play with.

 

[Perknose]

Not sure I'm following you on that one.

At first blush, it doesn't sound "doable", does it? By that I mean, of course, plugging an "input" device such as a microphone into an output jack such as a headphone jack shouldn't work, but it did.

Iirc, I used a truly cheap mono Rat Shack microphone and plugged it into the front headphone jack on my lovely, wood encased Sony 6050 receiver: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/ele/1550072770.html, that was the guts of my first real system.

 

[Rubycon]

Did anyone frustrated with having a broken or missing stylus - try an alternative? I remember hearing music from the tone arm with the speaker turned off so I tried other things like toothpicks and sewing needles. A rudimentary horn can be made out of packaging cardboard and a sharp toothpick attached to it will produce sound audible across the room.

I'm talking childhood years here.

At first blush, it doesn't sound "doable", does it? By that I mean, of course, plugging an "input" device such as a microphone into an output jack such as a headphone jack shouldn't work, but it did.

Iirc, I used a truly cheap mono Rat Shack microphone and plugged it into the front headphone jack on my lovely, wood encased Sony 6050 receiver: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/ele/1550072770.html, that was the guts of my first real system.

Ok so the microphone was acting as a speaker?

 

[Perknose]

I had a couple of 16 2/3 jazz albums. They were super thick- I'm talking about 1/4" thick. I seem to remember them having a very long play time per side as well.

Some trivia: Sometime around the mid 50's, they actually tried putting record players in cars (like CD players today). When you took a test drive, the dealer would give you an album to play to tell you the features of the car (the dealer didn't drive with you). These dealer records are very collectible to car buffs today. These records played at 16 2/3 because it was more tolerant to bumps.

Chryser offered them as factory options from around 1957 to maybe 1960.

 

[Perknose]

Ok so the microphone was acting as a speaker?

Nope, it was acting as a microphone and my voice came out of the speakers, via the headphone output jack.

I shit you not!

 

[krylon]

 

[Rubycon]

Nope, it was acting as a microphone and my voice came out of the speakers, via the headphone output jack.

I shit you not!

Wow strange!

That reminds me of a mic preamp that I had that picked up BBC broadcasts. I had no idea until I heard radio shows mixed in with recordings. I thought I was going insane! A floating ground can do weird things!

 

[seemingly random]

...
I shit you not!

Jeebus. There's a phrase I haven't heard in half a lifetime.

 

[Perknose]

We used no rumble filters and had these large Utah loudspeakers with 15" coaxial drivers.

[...]

Anyone have those Flexi records? They were square, flexible records in books.

Ahhh, homemade! Utah didn't make actual speakers, per se, just the drivers that you bought out of a catalog and put in whatever enclosure you'd built, iirc.

My very first "Flexi" record ever was "It's a Gas" that was included in a copy of Mad Magazine that I had a birthday gift subscription to.

Lol, it was a minor sensation just for the novelty of it!

"Do do do do, do do do do do do do (with full instrumental accompaniment) followed by a slight pause and long, loud Belch!

 

[lxskllr]

Speaking of weird electronic phenomena...

I once had a speaker phone that would occasionally pick up CB transmissions and broadcast from the speaker when the phone was on the hook That was a shaky period in my life, and it would weird me out big time. I had to open it up and clip the speaker wires to preserve my sanity :^D

 

[seemingly random]

Speaking of weird electronic phenomena...

I once had a speaker phone that would occasionally pick up CB transmissions and broadcast from the speaker when the phone was on the hook That was a shaky period in my life, and it would weird me out big time. I had to open it up and clip the speaker wires to preserve my sanity :^D

I would occasionally hear this coming out of the speakers when the stereo was off. Spooky...

How about a vacuum cleaner changing the channel on the tv?

 

[lxskllr]

How about a vacuum cleaner changing the channel on the tv?

That's pretty bizarre. I wonder what the mechanism is...

I only had an electronic channel changing TV for a couple of years before I quit TV. I imagine that would be necessary, right? Most of my TV time was using a set that had the old school knobs you had to crank around.