Hi Fran, when 45's skipped we added Pennies to the tone arm with cellophane tape. In my day 45's cost about 75 cents each. When you wore them out the song or artist was usually out of favor.
Just bought one on ebay for my 99 year old grandma. She still lives on her own sharp as a tac and mentioned that she wished she never got rid of her old 45 player. Its arriving tomorrow and im really hoping it plays well. The seller did say that when you adjust the volume there is a noticeable hum. I wish I was as knowledgeable as you so I could make sure it was perfect when I give it to her on Sunday for mother's day.
In my days as a broke teenager, there was a vending machine company that sold 45s pulled from jukeboxes, 25 cents each, 5 for a dollar. A lot of them were on their last legs already, but played on my Singer portable they were all mine. Had a 45 of Hot Butter, too.
in my neighborhood, it was a stereo/camera shop that got the 45's from jukeboxes. 10 cents each - no sleeves on them, and all had some obvious wear, but played well. It was a great way for a kid with very little money to build a collection of 45's. Most were only a year or two old.
I was a teen in the 80s and I don't recall there being an easy way to buy jukebox rejects. A new release was about 1.50 and used records generally went for 1/2 of that or less.
Some of us just got lucky. I miss the days of huge warehouse style record stores like Tower Records. I could have spent a lot more $$ there...except I didn't have much money.
There was a store I regularly went to in the 90s after vinyl died that specialized in 45s for jukeboxes. They had loads of old used 45s pulled from jukeboxes for very cheap, and also had many new release songs on 45s labeled “for jukeboxes only” that weren’t that expensive and were often on colored vinyl. I remember buying Creep from Radiohead there when it was a new hit song.
Chris Cuff is the expert on these RCA 45 RPM players; he has videos showing a full teardown and rebuild of the mechanism. Your player uses the RP-190 mechanism, introduced in 1950.
Yea, A guy sells refirbed rubber parts for these but honestly I just don't have the time to tear into it for that idler wheel. It's fully oiled and greased, and that's fine for me.
Rubber parts can be boiled to remove flat spots, and MG Chemical sells an excellent rubber restoring fluid which works wonders and smells really nice (paradoxically, many such things you shouldn't spend a long time smelling smell really good, liquid electrician's tape comes to mind, smells like the Frosting of the Gods...).
Hi, my first record player was an old RCA 45 RPM deck like that, but without the fancy case. I found it at the dump ground and later found an old AM radio that had a plug for the RCA jack to hook up the deck to so I could listen to records. We had a teen center where the places in town that had juke boxes would drop off their used records, and we could buy them for a quarter each (this was like 1964-65) so that's how I managed to get records on my buck a week allowance. Sure brings back memories seeing that old set working! I had an old shack behind our house that was at one time a farm grain storage shed long before the town closed in on the old place where we lived. I fixed it up, even sheet rocked it with panels we tore out of old house that we were paid to tear down, I had her fixed up nice. We had an old couch that I put in there, an easy chair, I brought down an old second hand TV set that my uncle gave me when he got a new on and put out there, even found an old bed in our storage area that I put up in the second room of the shack. Put my record player back there and used my old train transformer to power an old sealed beam headlight that we had painted red to illuminate the place. It was great, what a place for young teens who were experimenting with our sexuality. I can recall getting it on with my first girlfriend to the tune "Hello I Love You!" by the Doors playing on that old 45. It was the only record on the machine and kept playing over and over as we explored each other. Ah yes that was a time to be alive, the 60's before everyone was frightened by AIDS and free love was the topic of the day.
OMG, Fran! I saw that TI-30 calculator and it took me straight back to high school! I had that model for my electronics class at Bismarck High School! Love your show, keep it up!
I was just gifted one of these and am so glad I decided to sit down an watch your video on it, particularly the internal electronics end of it. Thanks much for a great piece. Well done!
Your record collection must really be something! When I was a kid in the 70s my dad would routinely bring me home a bunch of 45s that were swapped out of the jukebox in a bar/restaurant he used to hang out in. I had quite the collection when I was younger. Sadly i don’t have them anymore. Time for me to start a new collection!
I just bought one today at a thrift store hear in North Carolina. compleat with non broken latch, RCA emblem still there..I just took mine apart did everything you did in the video watching your video at the same time, that was fun
I believe the stylus is not sitting down snug on the felt pad that that ultimately is connected to the ceramic element hence you need extra weight to push the stylus up against the pad even before you add the weight necessary for the basic tracking. Remove the stylus and slightly bend it near the screw mounting as to cause the stylus to press up against the pad when the screw is tightened. From an old time tech...Glen
I really appreciate you making this video. I recently acquired a similar RCA 45 changer (a different model in a wood case, with a built-in radio tuner), and watching this video was a huge help for me in familiarizing myself with the mechanics. Also, really appreciate your review of the schematic circuit - that was so helpful!
Oh!!! And I almost forgot, I used to tape a penny to the back end of the tone arm, to offset some of the weight...get it just right and it will save both some records and your cartridges!
I'm very late to the party but really enjoyed watching this. It's too bad we never got these cute little things here in the UK. Great work on the resto btw.
For all of 0.02 seconds i expected you were going to say you'd a cunning way of whittling the actual grove contact tip from some kind of unobtainium to replace the one in the stylus on your new pickup. As usual, another neat video. The actual sound with the warble effect would send my crazy meaning i'd probably tear the entire mech down and fail miserably locating any kind of parts to be able to fix it...
It’s just the idler wheel that needs replaced. They’re actually not hard to find. That’s the next thing I’d have fixed as soon as I got sound out of it and realized it had such bad wow.
I found one of those old 45 RPM decks out at the city dump once when I was a young fellow, we were pretty much dirt poor so if I wanted stuff to tear apart, I needed to crawl down in the pit and see what others had thrown away. Back then there were no dump ground supervisors, it was just a huge pit where folks tossed their crap, and the city dump truck would dump. Took it back home and hooked it up to a small amp I had found some time before. Boy I had something for sure, it sounded really great too, I hooked up all the speakers I could find and tried to tune them with variable resistors I had pulled from old TV's and the like, but they just amounted to switches that would play the tunes over the speakers if turned all the way one way, but still I made it my self, and really wowed my friends, especially that little girl next door, but then that is another story completely.
Back when audio/video equipment popularly had rubber drive wheels, they used to make a fluid for reconditioning the rubber surfaces of drive tires. But, that only helped with traction issues, and was never permanent, at least in commercial use equipment. It was great to put equipment back into service while waiting for repair parts to arrive. That said, what I hear in this video sounds like a wheel shape issue. Flutter can also come from sticky bearings or bent shafts. I think from the 50s and later, most changers were small spindle type, and ppl bought plastic inserts to adapt 45s to play on small spindle players. Meanwhile, juke boxes' tooling typically handled the 45s from their edges. The thicker hubs made it easier to insert the plastic adapters, and allowed for a longer lasting hub diameter in juke box service. The importance of working with a 45-only changer fell by the wayside. Just a guess, though.
Kind of an inaccurate guess. The changers that were popular in the ‘70s well through the mid ‘80s (I had several back then) used a special spindle for playing 45s that dropped them from the big hole. The most common one was made by BSR. The biggest difference is these held the records stationary until it dropped them on the platter. This was the most common one: images.app.goo.gl/p6UjSNfv9rQEW7YR7
The rubber drive roller has probably hardened and lost its elasticity. If you use your thumbnail to make an impression and it doesn't spring back & disappear in a few seconds that indicates the rubber has "perished". That's why you have to replace or recover typewriter platens from time to time. Suppliers used to give us little sets of one "live" rubber ball and one perished one, so we could demonstrate the difference. The live rubber bounces while the perished rubber just drops like it's make of wood. There are companies that "re-tire" rubber rollers. It might be worth checking out.
FYI. I watched your one video about You Tube and how they don't put your videos in the viewers suggestions section. Ever since I watched that video, I now see your videos in my suggestions section. I am a new user to your channel. Keep it up !!! (from Canada).
New subscriber - great channel. I remember my parents had a similar RCA player that plugged into the back of the TV and shared the audio system. I miss the smell of those hot tubes!
Fran, I really like that you have a bunch of original pressings and labels like Fantasy and Bell Records. So cool. Thanks for the alignment guide. I have 2 other RCA players and this was very helpful. As always, thanks!
Great video Fran thank you for sharing with us! I just inherited 2 of these a few weeks ago and I'm really looking forward to restoring them hopefully I can get both of them to live again.
Great memories, I had the basic changer only version of that machine., no case or amp. I well remember that old ceramic cartridge. I remember certain later “45s” would hang and fail to drop. Wish I still had mine some 50 years later, but sadly it went to a new home during one of mom’s garage sales.
Fran, the center indentation of the record that you are referring to is caused by a set of machined dies as you stated later in video. There were several different styles of dies, but in 1950's through the 1970's there was a spec called out for this inner indentation. BTW - RCA began development of the 45 rpm in 1939 and issued the first 45 rpm's in 1948 or 1949. Great video.
After doing my own restoration of one of these, I was still getting a loud, intermittent hum. The tone-arm wire is a twisted pair, not shielded, and it's held under several metal clips on its way between the tone-arm and the amplifier. Turns out the wire was frayed slightly under one of those clips. Some electrical tape around the wire fixed it!
Hello Fran !! With that 45 player idler wheel try using just a little "RUBBER RENU" on the idler wheel surface, it may reduce that warbling by a fair amount ! RUBBER RENU is a cleaner/rejuvenator liquid compound, it restores some lost elasticity to the rubber which may reduce that "warbling" sound effect.
Man back when I was a kid in the 50's and 60's we used to tape nickles or quarters on the top of the players to get them to behave themselves, and wow, man that was cool. My cousin found a deal on a battery record player, it was one of those junk deals made in Japan, but wow we could park out under the stars, dig out the record player and some of our favorite tunes, a gallon jug of tap beer and we were in heaven! Ah man those were the days my friend.
Fran Blanche if it were mine, I would use a Qtip with a drop of brake fluid on it, and run it around the rubber of drive wheel. Then let it sit for several days before playing it. Brake fluid is a great rubber rejuvenator. It might take a few applications over a couple weeks, but it should soften it up considerably...
Lol... I was fortunate to catch the tail end of the 45 singles era in the 80's as a teen. I remember my parents had a record player that had the standard sized "nub" for LPs, and a tall multiple disc changer (removable) cylinder part that would optionally sit on top of that for 45s and worked as a changer like your jukebox. It was all auto like yours, so it makes me wonder how ours would have known to drop a record, perhaps the LP nub had some mechanical bit I didn't notice back in the day... It was of a newer vintage than yours, probably late 60s, and I don't recall the changer having problems dropping newer records from the 70s and 80s. Anyhow, great video!
...oh, and oddly my own personal record player had the reverse set up, where the LP nub was really tall and could automatically drop up to three LPs, but only had a little plastic "hockey puck" for 45s. But I think this was much more standard by the 80s.
People often think a heavy tracking force such as used with ceramic cartridges will damage records. It won't IF the tracking force is within the manufacturer recommended range for the cartridge and stylus tip shape. I suspect most of the 45s were played on ceramic cartridge record players and many if the player and record was taken care of still sound very good today. I have a few that I know my mom played on ceramic cartridge record players which I did as well and they still sound like new.
Just so ya know... it's not paraffin that leaks out of the cartridge, it's Lanolin. Nice video. It's really a shame that they don't offer the Pfanstiehl P-51 with a diamond tipped stylus. I gather from what you said that you somehow bought the Pfanstiehl P-51-2 (with the -2 indicating a 2 mil tip). You can buy the Pfanstiehl P-51-1 which has a 1 mil tip, but both are sapphire tipped. For those curious...the P-51's are supposed to deliver .7 volts to the preamp. I wish I knew what the original crystal cartridge (RCA 76318) voltage was ….
Hi Fran! At 16:15 you remark that 250 ohms is a pretty low value for an output tube plate. The 250 ohms is the DC resistance, not the AC impedance, which for a 50C5 would be in the neighborhood of 2K.
6g is pretty low btw. On eastern side of the iron curtain we had 7g to 12g as a standard for ceramic cartridges, depending on a cartridge type. 50s machine like this would have at least 10g..
That is one thing I noticed is 45 RPM Singles over there in the USA have a large hole in the middle. All the one's I have, have a small hole like 33 1/3rd LP's. although all the turntables come with a spindle adaptor. I have an old turntable, it is a Perpetuum Ebner Rex, in an old Siemens German Radiogram.
Initially when I restored my 45 player (same mechanism as yours) I used a stereo ceramic cartridge and to make the tonearm heavy enough I first loosened the spring some then later on I replaced the spring with a bolt I glued in the space where the spring went. Be careful with that mono cartridge and stereo records as most mono cartridges don't have the compliance to properly play stereo records without damaging them.
5.7 grams is light for a ceramic cartridge. I've seen some DJ magnetic cartridges track even heavier. If there's a conical stylus shape, you can almost track that as heavy as you want, but if you have an elliptical or Shibata stylus, they need to track as light as possible because they're actually harder on your records because the shape of the cut of the stylus. But they're not going to ruin your records at all. Another interesting note, when I had a record that would skip, I'd actually remove weight from the stylus and it usually took care of it.
RCA had a vested interest in making their records compatible with those changers they were giving away for 15 dollars apiece; I'd be surprised if competing labels were as diligent even in 1950. I'll bet the 45s with thicker inner edges actually worked better with one of those one-piece GE 45 stacking adapters. BTW: I've heard that putting a rubber band around the outside of the idler, supergluing it and sanding away the superglue can restore them. I'll have to try it sometime.
Count yourself lucky you didn't have to tear into the mechanism, I got into one once and was very glad I saw an old US Navy training film on how an electromechanical gun director works, lots of cams and gears and shit in there and things that have to happen at the right time or it fucks off and won't play because it thinks it's hit the end of the records.
Reminds me of my days running a disco, although our stylus was around 2.5g, we sometimes added a coin on top of the arm while playing if it was a bouncy floor and the audience got a bit active :D Hope the tape doesn't drop the nuts on the record, i would have used a bit of hotglue, to release the nuts just heat them with a good iron or a heatgun
8:00 I don't remember which labels, other than Mercury, stamped their USA-made 45s out of polystyrene (most imports were vinyl) , but they created a perfect storm of kids, heavy chisel-point tonearms and records that couldn't survive any abuse.
If that flat spot keeps driving you nuts, West-Tech services in Kent, Ohio will rebuild your idler wheel for a good price. Gib is a really nice guy, and does great work.
btw.. the alignment is not quite perfect. I notice that when the arm follows the 'take out' groove at the end of the play, the needle bumps the label of the record just before the arm lifts. It's a simple adjustment, but it's done underneath, not from above. YET, I learned something too, from you, about the thick inner vinyl being the cause of the record not dropping. I never thought about that, but you figured it out. I'm guessing that any and all RCA 45's will not cause you trouble dropping. Probably the reason that Bell record dropped, even though it was a more modern product, is that Bell was a cheap label and they probably used a pressing plant that hadn't updated their pressing machines since the 1950's. Just a guess.
Hello Fran, I'm a viewer from England. I do like your videos. I use XP (I have 10 but no thanks) and these days anything unusual like your streaming doesn't work for me but I think your streaming just might have. I just wanted to say hello and thanks for all you do. I have a Garrard Lab80 and a 301 player to sort out but I think spares are going to be a big problem as they are old. The Garrard 301 was used by the BBC I believe for a while so it's worth a bit of TLC. Do take care and all the best.
My first record player was like a small red vanity case although it did play lp's! Must find an old player and dig out my record collection. Some of my late seventies stuff are probably collectable if they've survived storage in the garage!
I'm watching you to calm down. You're soothing. Also, ceramic cartridges need less amplification and no equalization. What about the speed? 12:00 get your vernier caliper. 15:37 is that a live chassis!?.
Hey, if you look up the spec of that original cartridge, this should have tracked at about 4.5 Grams, and they have other cartridges that are current ceramics that will track at Under 5 grams. Might track a bit better than the one you had to add nuts for....
If 6 grams is the recommended tracking force for the cartridge, it will not damage the monaural records. You might have chosen a stereo cartridge with a lesser tracking force and bridged it for mono.
More than likely once the RCA 45 players fell out of favor, there was no real need to keep the center hole thickness at a certain tolerance. I have many 80's records which work fine on a 45 player.
Additionally, I would guess most of them ended up being played using spindle adapters anyway. I think these videos from Fran are the only times I've ever seen an actual thick spindle
I want to find one of these and replace the cartridge with a cheap AT magnetic cartridge. There’s got to be a way to get that arm to track at 3 grams. I really don’t want to subject my styrene 45s to more than that. I don’t play them much but I think if I had one of these modified like this I’d play them a lot.
A small piece of a self stick tire weight for mag rims works fine to add weight to the tonearm. You can also rebuild the Rochelle Salts cartridges by using the element from a piezo buzzer from an old computer kbd. or such. And of course, adding weight. PRB/ Russel rubber rejuv works good to rejuv the drive spindles & tires. Also typewriter platen cleaner works OK too. Dropping problems can sometimes be caused by the size of the hole in the record. The record hole does wear, causing problems. Saw that a lot with often played records. Never spray the mech with WD40, 3 in 1 oil, or the like. You will have massive problems from that. When that happened, I had to replace the rubber parts. You couldn't get the oil out of the rubber economically. Always use denatured alcohol to clean the parts with, as rubbing alcohol has oil in it. For shop rags, only use the white, bleached ones. The colored ones have a solvent in them, and that really screws up getting stuff clean. You might want to add a series dropping resistor before the motor takeoff too. The higher line voltage today., typ.120-125V instead of the 110-115V can really stress the motors and tubes. I spent many, many years repairing phonos, and saw a lot of nightmare problems with them. Electric Organ Oil is great to use on the mech, as well as Lubriplate(tm) lithium grease. If you can find it, I found Texclad 3 (Texaco) was the cats meow for greasing the mechanisms. Its 33% graphite. I never had any get hard and gum up the mech. in the 35+ years I used it. (Originally it was designed for open gears. Be sure to wear rubber gloves and don't get it on your clothes. That graphite grease is a real pain to get out of clothing & off your hands.).
This is very much the kind of stuff i do when i have the time/or drive/desire. I wonder if when people like you and i and the rest of that do this stuff are gone, will it continue?? When will the leftover tubes finally be gone? I have saved every one i could get my hands on that still have good emission, thinking forward to when i'll need one. Sadly one reason they still kick around is people see $$ in old tubes, at least they are not ending up in a landfill somewhere and are in some kind of circulation still.... If it has tubes in it, i have fondness for it. Thanks for sharing Fran......
Not all ceramic cartridges tracked that heavy. My Magnavox turntables track at less than 3 grams. Zenith had a two gram cartridge. RCA seemed to use heavy tracking cartridges even in their later products.
The flimsy sound on your RCA player,are probably that the middelwheel need's to be re-rubbed. The rubber gets hard and the edge get flimsy because small parts of rubber comes off,and when it goes into the spindel on the motor,the flimsy sound appear.
You missed the most important part, stability of the turntable speed. Did you clean and lubricate the motor? Are the motor mount grommets soft and pliable? What kind of shape is the idler wheel in? You have a nasty warble there. As far as adjusting the tracking weight of the tone arm, why didn't you just adjust the spring tension? The tone arm is plenty heavy enough. I would check to see what is obstructing it from lowering all the way down on the record. If you are just going to play mono 45's, you could have got a P51-1 cartridge. I prefer stereo cartridges myself. On the 3 tube or more players a P132D cartridge works great. If you are worried about damaging the stylus on the bare deck, glue a thin curved piece of rubber or plastic like on a VM changer. Oh, a lesson about 45 rpm records. RCA created the raised label area so the the grooves didn't scrape on each other in a stack of records. In the boxed sets, originally RCA just put a piece of paper in between the records to protect the labels, a full sleeve was unnecessary. 45's like your red one and the Beatles 45 are made of vinyl. The Bell and Musicor 45's are made of poly styrene in an injection molded process. The labels have to be glued on after those records are made. The vinyl records have the labels pressed into the record during the pressing process. If you have a tracking weight of 6 grams or more, the poly styrene records will be eaten up fairly quickly. A tracking weight of 3-5 grams is preferable.
I prefer separate components to the all-in-one approach, so I have the RCA 45-J-2 going into a Zenith C845 phono input. Now you've got high fidelity! (...ish) Seriously, though, many people stuff stereo cartridges in those and wire them for mono so the stylus has the compliance to give vertically and hopefully not destroy (as much) those stereo 45s. I bet at lighter tracking force, the needle jumps out of stereo records more than it does mono ones. Also, the thick 45s are often made of styrene instead of vinyl, and they were bad even when they were new! So what's another 6 gram stylus going to do to them? I'm sure other record players of the day tracked even heavier, and I've got an RCA changer that tracks at about 11 grams!
Just curious... The old phonos like this that I played with had a screw adjusted spring in the tone arm to fiddle with for the right tracking "weight." This one didn't I guess - so I learned something new about that, too.
Most records never had those wide diameter central hole 45rpm record players where im from. They more often than not used the same size central hole size as a standard 33rpm record and the record changers never had the same tolerance issues. maybe the larger hole tolerance became an issue and other country's didn't adopt it as much for domestic use? Many new record players still came with a spindle size adapter but no one used them.
Loud hummm! Picked one of these up yesterday at a garage sale. Got things turning but when it powers up there is just a loud hummm. What should I be looking at? Any help is appreciated.
I tend to cannibalize old cartridges and spare stylus's. Because the mountings vary so widely I may glue or solder a stylus onto the original part. Very fiddly, but as long as it works and looks okay I don't care. Sometimes, I'll rebuild the whole thing, just to fit a teeny weeny little needle. I'm too bodgy to order parts!
Hi I have the same type Was working properly Now when I turn it on the arm oscillates up and down instead to going onto the record Any idea why and how can I fix this defect that came on its own !!! Thank you
Hi Fran, when 45's skipped we added Pennies to the tone arm with cellophane tape. In my day 45's cost about 75 cents each. When you wore them out the song or artist was usually out of favor.
Just bought one on ebay for my 99 year old grandma. She still lives on her own sharp as a tac and mentioned that she wished she never got rid of her old 45 player. Its arriving tomorrow and im really hoping it plays well. The seller did say that when you adjust the volume there is a noticeable hum. I wish I was as knowledgeable as you so I could make sure it was perfect when I give it to her on Sunday for mother's day.
I enjoy seeing old machines like that being restored. I am blind and I love good sound and older equipment.
In my days as a broke teenager, there was a vending machine company that sold 45s pulled from jukeboxes, 25 cents each, 5 for a dollar. A lot of them were on their last legs already, but played on my Singer portable they were all mine. Had a 45 of Hot Butter, too.
That was a good song!
in my neighborhood, it was a stereo/camera shop that got the 45's from jukeboxes. 10 cents each - no sleeves on them, and all had some obvious wear, but played well. It was a great way for a kid with very little money to build a collection of 45's. Most were only a year or two old.
I was a teen in the 80s and I don't recall there being an easy way to buy jukebox rejects. A new release was about 1.50 and used records generally went for 1/2 of that or less.
Some of us just got lucky. I miss the days of huge warehouse style record stores like Tower Records. I could have spent a lot more $$ there...except I didn't have much money.
There was a store I regularly went to in the 90s after vinyl died that specialized in 45s for jukeboxes. They had loads of old used 45s pulled from jukeboxes for very cheap, and also had many new release songs on 45s labeled “for jukeboxes only” that weren’t that expensive and were often on colored vinyl. I remember buying Creep from Radiohead there when it was a new hit song.
Chris Cuff is the expert on these RCA 45 RPM players; he has videos showing a full teardown and rebuild of the mechanism. Your player uses the RP-190 mechanism, introduced in 1950.
Yea, A guy sells refirbed rubber parts for these but honestly I just don't have the time to tear into it for that idler wheel. It's fully oiled and greased, and that's fine for me.
if you had to,, replace the rubber with 2 or 3 stacked o-rings of the correct OD/ID size. And lead tape would prob work well for the weight.
Rubber parts can be boiled to remove flat spots, and MG Chemical sells an excellent rubber restoring fluid which works wonders and smells really nice (paradoxically, many such things you shouldn't spend a long time smelling smell really good, liquid electrician's tape comes to mind, smells like the Frosting of the Gods...).
Hi, my first record player was an old RCA 45 RPM deck like that, but without the fancy case. I found it at the dump ground and later found an old AM radio that had a plug for the RCA jack to hook up the deck to so I could listen to records. We had a teen center where the places in town that had juke boxes would drop off their used records, and we could buy them for a quarter each (this was like 1964-65) so that's how I managed to get records on my buck a week allowance. Sure brings back memories seeing that old set working! I had an old shack behind our house that was at one time a farm grain storage shed long before the town closed in on the old place where we lived. I fixed it up, even sheet rocked it with panels we tore out of old house that we were paid to tear down, I had her fixed up nice. We had an old couch that I put in there, an easy chair, I brought down an old second hand TV set that my uncle gave me when he got a new on and put out there, even found an old bed in our storage area that I put up in the second room of the shack. Put my record player back there and used my old train transformer to power an old sealed beam headlight that we had painted red to illuminate the place. It was great, what a place for young teens who were experimenting with our sexuality. I can recall getting it on with my first girlfriend to the tune "Hello I Love You!" by the Doors playing on that old 45. It was the only record on the machine and kept playing over and over as we explored each other. Ah yes that was a time to be alive, the 60's before everyone was frightened by AIDS and free love was the topic of the day.
Thanks Fran. I have a turntable only version of that player I am going to restore. Saved me a lot of figuring out.
I remember playing that exact issue of "Little Willy" by The Sweet as a kid. I think I still have my 45 of it. :D
OMG, Fran! I saw that TI-30 calculator and it took me straight back to high school! I had that model for my electronics class at Bismarck High School! Love your show, keep it up!
I was gonna make the same comment Mark. I instantly got transported back to the 70's. That calculator was the one you had to have.
When I was in high school, the abacus was our calculator.
Hi Fran. 😊 The 250 ohm for the output transformer primary is the DC resistance. The actual load impedance will be probably 3k or so. Cheers.
Cool record player and thanks for the showing the diagram and explanations and comments about it.
I was just gifted one of these and am so glad I decided to sit down an watch your video on it, particularly the internal electronics end of it. Thanks much for a great piece. Well done!
Your record collection must really be something! When I was a kid in the 70s my dad would routinely bring me home a bunch of 45s that were swapped out of the jukebox in a bar/restaurant he used to hang out in. I had quite the collection when I was younger. Sadly i don’t have them anymore. Time for me to start a new collection!
I just bought one today at a thrift store hear in North Carolina. compleat with non broken latch, RCA emblem still there..I just took mine apart did everything you did in the video watching your video at the same time, that was fun
I enjoyed that Fran. I love people demonstrating history.
I believe the stylus is not sitting down snug on the felt pad that that ultimately is connected to the ceramic element hence you need extra weight to push the stylus up against the pad even before you add the weight necessary for the basic tracking.
Remove the stylus and slightly bend it near the screw mounting as to cause the stylus to press up against the pad when the screw is tightened.
From an old time tech...Glen
Absolutely love how you start all of your videos and find myself saying it with you at the say time
I really appreciate you making this video. I recently acquired a similar RCA 45 changer (a different model in a wood case, with a built-in radio tuner), and watching this video was a huge help for me in familiarizing myself with the mechanics. Also, really appreciate your review of the schematic circuit - that was so helpful!
For tube circuits of this vintage, RUclipss, Uncle Doug is the greatest resource, he is a brilliant educator.
Oh!!! And I almost forgot, I used to tape a penny to the back end of the tone arm, to offset some of the weight...get it just right and it will save both some records and your cartridges!
I'm very late to the party but really enjoyed watching this. It's too bad we never got these cute little things here in the UK. Great work on the resto btw.
For all of 0.02 seconds i expected you were going to say you'd a cunning way of whittling the actual grove contact tip from some kind of unobtainium to replace the one in the stylus on your new pickup. As usual, another neat video. The actual sound with the warble effect would send my crazy meaning i'd probably tear the entire mech down and fail miserably locating any kind of parts to be able to fix it...
It’s just the idler wheel that needs replaced. They’re actually not hard to find. That’s the next thing I’d have fixed as soon as I got sound out of it and realized it had such bad wow.
I found one of those old 45 RPM decks out at the city dump once when I was a young fellow, we were pretty much dirt poor so if I wanted stuff to tear apart, I needed to crawl down in the pit and see what others had thrown away. Back then there were no dump ground supervisors, it was just a huge pit where folks tossed their crap, and the city dump truck would dump. Took it back home and hooked it up to a small amp I had found some time before. Boy I had something for sure, it sounded really great too, I hooked up all the speakers I could find and tried to tune them with variable resistors I had pulled from old TV's and the like, but they just amounted to switches that would play the tunes over the speakers if turned all the way one way, but still I made it my self, and really wowed my friends, especially that little girl next door, but then that is another story completely.
Oh the tune that was the favorite back then: The Doors "Hello I love you won't you tell me your name"
ruclips.net/video/8f1z-nHvt3c/видео.html
Did you win her over?
Back when audio/video equipment popularly had rubber drive wheels, they used to make a fluid for reconditioning the rubber surfaces of drive tires. But, that only helped with traction issues, and was never permanent, at least in commercial use equipment. It was great to put equipment back into service while waiting for repair parts to arrive. That said, what I hear in this video sounds like a wheel shape issue. Flutter can also come from sticky bearings or bent shafts.
I think from the 50s and later, most changers were small spindle type, and ppl bought plastic inserts to adapt 45s to play on small spindle players. Meanwhile, juke boxes' tooling typically handled the 45s from their edges. The thicker hubs made it easier to insert the plastic adapters, and allowed for a longer lasting hub diameter in juke box service. The importance of working with a 45-only changer fell by the wayside. Just a guess, though.
Kind of an inaccurate guess. The changers that were popular in the ‘70s well through the mid ‘80s (I had several back then) used a special spindle for playing 45s that dropped them from the big hole. The most common one was made by BSR. The biggest difference is these held the records stationary until it dropped them on the platter. This was the most common one: images.app.goo.gl/p6UjSNfv9rQEW7YR7
The rubber drive roller has probably hardened and lost its elasticity. If you use your thumbnail to make an impression and it doesn't spring back & disappear in a few seconds that indicates the rubber has "perished". That's why you have to replace or recover typewriter platens from time to time. Suppliers used to give us little sets of one "live" rubber ball and one perished one, so we could demonstrate the difference. The live rubber bounces while the perished rubber just drops like it's make of wood. There are companies that "re-tire" rubber rollers. It might be worth checking out.
FYI. I watched your one video about You Tube and how they don't put your videos in the viewers suggestions section. Ever since I watched that video, I now see your videos in my suggestions section. I am a new user to your channel. Keep it up !!! (from Canada).
Hey Fran, "Popcorn" by Hot Butter - That was my first record! I quite liked the B-Side too.
The thin circle around the label is called the run out on vinyl records.
17:16 - Seeing that old 9V TI-30 got me all hot and bothered. I have one sitting in my desk drawer right now. I love those old displays!
Fran there is a spring (or should be in the rear of the tonearm.) take that spring off and you may need only 1 (Nut) weight or possibly none.
Damn, True old school, I will not mention the one I used in the late 50's. It might give my age away.
New subscriber - great channel. I remember my parents had a similar RCA player that plugged into the back of the TV and shared the audio system. I miss the smell of those hot tubes!
Hello Fran I modified my 45 spindle to work with the newer thicker records by carefully filing the plastic rest release
I really liked the circuit explanation. Thanks
Fran, I really like that you have a bunch of original pressings and labels like Fantasy and Bell Records. So cool. Thanks for the alignment guide. I have 2 other RCA players and this was very helpful. As always, thanks!
Great video Fran thank you for sharing with us! I just inherited 2 of these a few weeks ago and I'm really looking forward to restoring them hopefully I can get both of them to live again.
Really appreciate this since I have a few of these and one needs service on the record drop. Thanks Fran!!
Great memories, I had the basic changer only version of that machine., no case or amp. I well remember that old ceramic cartridge. I remember certain later “45s” would hang and fail to drop. Wish I still had mine some 50 years later, but sadly it went to a new home during one of mom’s garage sales.
Fran, the center indentation of the record that you are referring to is caused by a set of machined dies as you stated later in video. There were several different styles of dies, but in 1950's through the 1970's there was a spec called out for this inner indentation. BTW - RCA began development of the 45 rpm in 1939 and issued the first 45 rpm's in 1948 or 1949. Great video.
Hi Fran, great video, just here to say my T-Shirt turned up the other day, great design.
After doing my own restoration of one of these, I was still getting a loud, intermittent hum. The tone-arm wire is a twisted pair, not shielded, and it's held under several metal clips on its way between the tone-arm and the amplifier. Turns out the wire was frayed slightly under one of those clips. Some electrical tape around the wire fixed it!
Hello Fran !! With that 45 player idler wheel try using just a little "RUBBER RENU" on the idler wheel surface, it may reduce that warbling by a fair amount ! RUBBER RENU is a cleaner/rejuvenator liquid compound, it restores some lost elasticity to the rubber which may reduce that "warbling" sound effect.
You can get rebuilt idler wheels, that should sort your player!
Man back when I was a kid in the 50's and 60's we used to tape nickles or quarters on the top of the players to get them to behave themselves, and wow, man that was cool. My cousin found a deal on a battery record player, it was one of those junk deals made in Japan, but wow we could park out under the stars, dig out the record player and some of our favorite tunes, a gallon jug of tap beer and we were in heaven! Ah man those were the days my friend.
Fran Blanche if it were mine, I would use a Qtip with a drop of brake fluid on it, and run it around the rubber of drive wheel. Then let it sit for several days before playing it. Brake fluid is a great rubber rejuvenator. It might take a few applications over a couple weeks, but it should soften it up considerably...
What a beauty! You as well Fran😉 I always learn something when I watch your videos.
Lol... I was fortunate to catch the tail end of the 45 singles era in the 80's as a teen. I remember my parents had a record player that had the standard sized "nub" for LPs, and a tall multiple disc changer (removable) cylinder part that would optionally sit on top of that for 45s and worked as a changer like your jukebox. It was all auto like yours, so it makes me wonder how ours would have known to drop a record, perhaps the LP nub had some mechanical bit I didn't notice back in the day... It was of a newer vintage than yours, probably late 60s, and I don't recall the changer having problems dropping newer records from the 70s and 80s. Anyhow, great video!
...oh, and oddly my own personal record player had the reverse set up, where the LP nub was really tall and could automatically drop up to three LPs, but only had a little plastic "hockey puck" for 45s. But I think this was much more standard by the 80s.
People often think a heavy tracking force such as used with ceramic cartridges will damage records.
It won't IF the tracking force is within the manufacturer recommended range for the cartridge and stylus tip shape.
I suspect most of the 45s were played on ceramic cartridge record players and many if the player and record was taken care of still sound very good today.
I have a few that I know my mom played on ceramic cartridge record players which I did as well and they still sound like new.
Just so ya know... it's not paraffin that leaks out of the cartridge, it's Lanolin. Nice video. It's really a shame that they don't offer the Pfanstiehl P-51 with a diamond tipped stylus. I gather from what you said that you somehow bought the Pfanstiehl P-51-2 (with the -2 indicating a 2 mil tip). You can buy the Pfanstiehl P-51-1 which has a 1 mil tip, but both are sapphire tipped. For those curious...the P-51's are supposed to deliver .7 volts to the preamp. I wish I knew what the original crystal cartridge (RCA 76318) voltage was ….
Hi Fran! At 16:15 you remark that 250 ohms is a pretty low value for an output tube plate. The 250 ohms is the DC resistance, not the AC impedance, which for a 50C5 would be in the neighborhood of 2K.
6g is pretty low btw. On eastern side of the iron curtain we had 7g to 12g as a standard for ceramic cartridges, depending on a cartridge type. 50s machine like this would have at least 10g..
Wow, that was AWESOME !! Thanks...
I had a TI 30 calculator from September 1977 to about 1982 when I was studying Electronic Engineering at the then Liverpool Polytechnic. :-)
That is one thing I noticed is 45 RPM Singles over there in the USA have a large hole in the middle. All the one's I have, have a small hole like 33 1/3rd LP's. although all the turntables come with a spindle adaptor. I have an old turntable, it is a Perpetuum Ebner Rex, in an old Siemens German Radiogram.
Very nice record player
Those are the records to clean with glue more glue / less dry time especially one with lots of background hiss. You've got good taste in Music.
Initially when I restored my 45 player (same mechanism as yours) I used a stereo ceramic cartridge and to make the tonearm heavy enough I first loosened the spring some then later on I replaced the spring with a bolt I glued in the space where the spring went.
Be careful with that mono cartridge and stereo records as most mono cartridges don't have the compliance to properly play stereo records without damaging them.
This thing is dead sexy! Sounds like a blown out Seeburg at a backwoods soda fountain/bait shop/gas station/hardware store
5.7 grams is light for a ceramic cartridge. I've seen some DJ magnetic cartridges track even heavier. If there's a conical stylus shape, you can almost track that as heavy as you want, but if you have an elliptical or Shibata stylus, they need to track as light as possible because they're actually harder on your records because the shape of the cut of the stylus. But they're not going to ruin your records at all. Another interesting note, when I had a record that would skip, I'd actually remove weight from the stylus and it usually took care of it.
RCA had a vested interest in making their records compatible with those changers they were giving away for 15 dollars apiece; I'd be surprised if competing labels were as diligent even in 1950. I'll bet the 45s with thicker inner edges actually worked better with one of those one-piece GE 45 stacking adapters. BTW: I've heard that putting a rubber band around the outside of the idler, supergluing it and sanding away the superglue can restore them. I'll have to try it sometime.
Count yourself lucky you didn't have to tear into the mechanism, I got into one once and was very glad I saw an old US Navy training film on how an electromechanical gun director works, lots of cams and gears and shit in there and things that have to happen at the right time or it fucks off and won't play because it thinks it's hit the end of the records.
Nice work on those fiddly repairs!
Reminds me of my days running a disco, although our stylus was around 2.5g, we sometimes added a coin on top of the arm while playing if it was a bouncy floor and the audience got a bit active :D
Hope the tape doesn't drop the nuts on the record, i would have used a bit of hotglue, to release the nuts just heat them with a good iron or a heatgun
8:00 I don't remember which labels, other than Mercury, stamped their USA-made 45s out of polystyrene (most imports were vinyl) , but they created a perfect storm of kids, heavy chisel-point tonearms and records that couldn't survive any abuse.
If that flat spot keeps driving you nuts, West-Tech services in Kent, Ohio will rebuild your idler wheel for a good price. Gib is a really nice guy, and does great work.
I had to pause for a second to find that 'Hot Buttered Popcorn' ... it's been decades!
btw.. the alignment is not quite perfect. I notice that when the arm follows the 'take out' groove at the end of the play, the needle bumps the label of the record just before the arm lifts. It's a simple adjustment, but it's done underneath, not from above. YET, I learned something too, from you, about the thick inner vinyl being the cause of the record not dropping. I never thought about that, but you figured it out. I'm guessing that any and all RCA 45's will not cause you trouble dropping. Probably the reason that Bell record dropped, even though it was a more modern product, is that Bell was a cheap label and they probably used a pressing plant that hadn't updated their pressing machines since the 1950's. Just a guess.
Hello Fran, I'm a viewer from England. I do like your videos. I use XP (I have 10 but no thanks) and these days anything unusual like your streaming doesn't work for me but I think your streaming just might have. I just wanted to say hello and thanks for all you do. I have a Garrard Lab80 and a 301 player to sort out but I think spares are going to be a big problem as they are old. The Garrard 301 was used by the BBC I believe for a while so it's worth a bit of TLC. Do take care and all the best.
Should also mention that reconditioned drive wheels can be found online at VoiceofMusic.com and you just send the old one in. Very reasonable.
My first record player was like a small red vanity case although it did play lp's! Must find an old player and dig out my record collection. Some of my late seventies stuff are probably collectable if they've survived storage in the garage!
ti-30 calculator gave me a sentimental response . my first calculator in middle school .
I'm watching you to calm down. You're soothing. Also, ceramic cartridges need less amplification and no equalization. What about the speed? 12:00 get your vernier caliper. 15:37 is that a live chassis!?.
Hey, if you look up the spec of that original cartridge, this should have tracked at about 4.5 Grams, and they have other cartridges that are current ceramics that will track at Under 5 grams. Might track a bit better than the one you had to add nuts for....
Great player & video
If 6 grams is the recommended tracking force for the cartridge, it will not damage the monaural records. You might have chosen a stereo cartridge with a lesser tracking force and bridged it for mono.
They playback is WOW-y! Sounds like the idler wheel was left enganged, leaving a flat spot!
I've used Blu-Tack to add weight to things. Works good and it will come off again if needed.
More than likely once the RCA 45 players fell out of favor, there was no real need to keep the center hole thickness at a certain tolerance.
I have many 80's records which work fine on a 45 player.
Additionally, I would guess most of them ended up being played using spindle adapters anyway. I think these videos from Fran are the only times I've ever seen an actual thick spindle
I want to find one of these and replace the cartridge with a cheap AT magnetic cartridge. There’s got to be a way to get that arm to track at 3 grams. I really don’t want to subject my styrene 45s to more than that. I don’t play them much but I think if I had one of these modified like this I’d play them a lot.
A small piece of a self stick tire weight for mag rims works fine to add weight to the tonearm.
You can also rebuild the Rochelle Salts cartridges by using the element from a piezo buzzer from an old computer kbd. or such. And of course, adding weight.
PRB/ Russel rubber rejuv works good to rejuv the drive spindles & tires. Also typewriter platen cleaner works OK too.
Dropping problems can sometimes be caused by the size of the hole in the record. The record hole does wear, causing problems. Saw that a lot with often played records. Never spray the mech with WD40, 3 in 1 oil, or the like. You will have massive problems from that. When that happened, I had to replace the rubber parts. You couldn't get the oil out of the rubber economically.
Always use denatured alcohol to clean the parts with, as rubbing alcohol has oil in it. For shop rags, only use the white, bleached ones. The colored ones have a solvent in them, and that really screws up getting stuff clean.
You might want to add a series dropping resistor before the motor takeoff too. The higher line voltage today., typ.120-125V instead of the 110-115V can really stress the motors and tubes.
I spent many, many years repairing phonos, and saw a lot of nightmare problems with them. Electric Organ Oil is great to use on the mech, as well as Lubriplate(tm) lithium grease.
If you can find it, I found Texclad 3 (Texaco) was the cats meow for greasing the mechanisms. Its 33% graphite. I never had any get hard and gum up the mech. in the 35+ years I used it. (Originally it was designed for open gears. Be sure to wear rubber gloves and don't get it on your clothes. That graphite grease is a real pain to get out of clothing & off your hands.).
This is very much the kind of stuff i do when i have the time/or drive/desire. I wonder if when people like you and i and the rest of that do this stuff are gone, will it continue?? When will the leftover tubes finally be gone? I have saved every one i could get my hands on that still have good emission, thinking forward to when i'll need one. Sadly one reason they still kick around is people see $$ in old tubes, at least they are not ending up in a landfill somewhere and are in some kind of circulation still....
If it has tubes in it, i have fondness for it. Thanks for sharing Fran......
At least with the rounded off wheel there's less chance of a copyright claim.
I thought so - but it got slammed on the first edit and I had to delete, redact, and repost. Damn Googlebots!
Not all ceramic cartridges tracked that heavy. My Magnavox turntables track at less than 3 grams. Zenith had a two gram cartridge. RCA seemed to use heavy tracking cartridges even in their later products.
The flimsy sound on your RCA player,are probably that the middelwheel need's to be re-rubbed. The rubber gets hard and the edge get flimsy because small parts of rubber comes off,and when it goes into the spindel on the motor,the flimsy sound appear.
i kinda like the tremolo effect it has. makes me think of 1960s surf music.
I just got this same model from a neighbor. It didn't work but I'm hoping this vid will help
You missed the most important part, stability of the turntable speed. Did you clean and lubricate the motor? Are the motor mount grommets soft and pliable? What kind of shape is the idler wheel in? You have a nasty warble there. As far as adjusting the tracking weight of the tone arm, why didn't you just adjust the spring tension? The tone arm is plenty heavy enough. I would check to see what is obstructing it from lowering all the way down on the record. If you are just going to play mono 45's, you could have got a P51-1 cartridge. I prefer stereo cartridges myself. On the 3 tube or more players a P132D cartridge works great. If you are worried about damaging the stylus on the bare deck, glue a thin curved piece of rubber or plastic like on a VM changer. Oh, a lesson about 45 rpm records. RCA created the raised label area so the the grooves didn't scrape on each other in a stack of records. In the boxed sets, originally RCA just put a piece of paper in between the records to protect the labels, a full sleeve was unnecessary. 45's like your red one and the Beatles 45 are made of vinyl. The Bell and Musicor 45's are made of poly styrene in an injection molded process. The labels have to be glued on after those records are made. The vinyl records have the labels pressed into the record during the pressing process. If you have a tracking weight of 6 grams or more, the poly styrene records will be eaten up fairly quickly. A tracking weight of 3-5 grams is preferable.
I prefer separate components to the all-in-one approach, so I have the RCA 45-J-2 going into a Zenith C845 phono input. Now you've got high fidelity! (...ish) Seriously, though, many people stuff stereo cartridges in those and wire them for mono so the stylus has the compliance to give vertically and hopefully not destroy (as much) those stereo 45s. I bet at lighter tracking force, the needle jumps out of stereo records more than it does mono ones. Also, the thick 45s are often made of styrene instead of vinyl, and they were bad even when they were new! So what's another 6 gram stylus going to do to them? I'm sure other record players of the day tracked even heavier, and I've got an RCA changer that tracks at about 11 grams!
Just curious... The old phonos like this that I played with had a screw adjusted spring in the tone arm to fiddle with for the right tracking "weight." This one didn't I guess - so I learned something new about that, too.
Have you checked the idler wheel on that player? It seems to be slipping.
We had an autochanger record player in the 70s. It was a Bush RP60. Thin spindle.
Most of the ones with a thin spindle had an optional thick spindle for playing 45s. I collected several of them when I was a teenager.
This one didn't ;)
Those steady hands! i'd be all over the place. haha.
Hi Fran I have 2 of these that I would like to have running again do you repair for other people?
Always something interesting....
Most records never had those wide diameter central hole 45rpm record players where im from. They more often than not used the same size central hole size as a standard 33rpm record and the record changers never had the same tolerance issues. maybe the larger hole tolerance became an issue and other country's didn't adopt it as much for domestic use?
Many new record players still came with a spindle size adapter but no one used them.
Most enjoyable. Thanks!
Loud hummm! Picked one of these up yesterday at a garage sale. Got things turning but when it powers up there is just a loud hummm. What should I be looking at? Any help is appreciated.
I tend to cannibalize old cartridges and spare stylus's. Because the mountings vary so widely I may glue or solder a stylus onto the original part. Very fiddly, but as long as it works and looks okay I don't care. Sometimes, I'll rebuild the whole thing, just to fit a teeny weeny little needle. I'm too bodgy to order parts!
Hi
I have the same type
Was working properly
Now when I turn it on the arm oscillates up and down instead to going onto the record
Any idea why and how can I fix this defect that came on its own !!!
Thank you
I worked for an RCA TV service shop in the Philly area back in the late '60s. I may have worked on one of these. Is that a Bakelite plastic case?