Record Albums have two sides! (duh!)

[velvetjones]

On Saturday my husband declared that if he couldn't listen to his vast and varied record collection he would surely perish. We don't currently own a turntable but we've been talking about buying one for months. We headed on down to Circuit City and managed to find the two turntables that they actually still sell. As the young Circuit City dude was taking us to the register he asked us

"What do you use one of these things for?"

My husband and I looked at each other, incredulous. I thought for a moment he might have been making a joke but no, he really didn't know.

"To listen to records." was my answer
"You remember records, don't you?" my husband asked.
"Nope, that's way before my time." he replied

Feeling really old we finished paying for the turntable and headed over to the pickup counter.

Today, we're enjoying my husband's record collection which includes some albums that were given to him by a friend so they're new to both of us. After the first album ended my husband looked at me and said

"see, this is the problem with record albums" as he turned over the album to listen to the other side.

"Records have two sides!" I said

I had somehow completely forgotten that records have two sides and needed to be turned over. How could I forget that?

We're listening to this excellent jazz album by Dizzy Gillespie and The Deep Six which was a parisian vocal group. It's just outstanding. Both sides of it.

[Miller]

Man, does Circuit City suck or what? They must have gone out of their way to find a clerk who was so totally ignorant of the store's stock that he doesn't even know what a turntable is. I mean, vinyl isn't the format du jour anymore, but to not even know what a record player is? That's not because of youth. That's because of stupid.

I've only ever once been genuinely glad to have a Circuit City nearby. A couple months ago, a new video game, Dead Rising, came out. And sold out almost immediately. Best Buy was sold out. Electronics Boutique was sold out. I went to Circuit City as a last ditch effort. Turns out, their incompetence actually worked for me. See, DR is an XBox 360 game. The Circuit City near my house apparently hasn't figured out that XBox and XBox 360 are seperate consoles. Also, they haven't figured out how the alphabet works, because they just throw the games on the shelf in any old order. By combing through the shelf of randomly mixed XBox and XBox 360 games, I was able to dig up a copy of the game I wanted. It was behind a copy of the movie, Son of the Mask, which was filed with the XBox games on the grounds that it was packaged in the same neon-green DVD case that XBox games come in.

Circuit City: We're idiots, but sometimes we're useful idiots.

[Hodge]

To be honest, I'm shocked that that they even sell turntables. I haven't actually seen a turntable outside of dedicated audiophile stores in several years.

Originally Posted by velvetjones

We're listening to this excellent jazz album by Dizzy Gillespie and The Deep Six which was a parisian vocal group. It's just outstanding. Both sides of it.

I think you'll find that's the Double Six. BTW, I completely agree with you, it's an outstanding bebop album with some awesome vocalese scatting. It doesn't quite reach the heights of Dizzy Gillespie at Newport, though.

[Rhiannon8404]

How cool! We really need to get our turn table hooked up and start playing some of Suburban Plankton's albums. He has tons of them.

As for the dweeb at the electronics store...sheesh, what an idiot. Even my 8 yo knows what a turn table is for. He wonders why we still have it, but he knows what it's for.

[DoctorJ]

They still make quite a bit of new vinyl. It's mostly in the dance/hip-hop genre or from bands that appeal to music nerds, mostly on indie labels. For instance, I just ordered the new Decemberists album on vinyl.

You can usually find plenty of it in your local independent music store. That's also a good place to look for a turntable, or certainly for someone who can tell you where to find one.

I'm no audiophile. I'm trying to learn the art of mixing/turntablism, but it's a curiosity for me more than anything.

[fishbicycle]

Turntables have never gone out of production, really. You can still get cheap, crappy ones, fairly inexpensive, nice ones, and you can still get unbelievably expensive, precision ones. Just like the old days. Circuit City wouldn't have even been on my list of where to look, but there you go. They're still carrying them.

I've mentioned this before, but for this thread, it bears repeating. A kid came to work at the radio station, and he was asked to transfer a record. He had to ask how the turntable worked. He had never seen one. Inside of two minutes, he had demolished the record and the stylus on a $200 cartridge by scraping it across the grooves to find a track. Apparently even the concept of the cue lever was alien to him.

[Achren]

Originally Posted by fishbicycle

<snip>I've mentioned this before, but for this thread, it bears repeating. A kid came to work at the radio station, and he was asked to transfer a record. He had to ask how the turntable worked. He had never seen one. Inside of two minutes, he had demolished the record and the stylus on a $200 cartridge by scraping it across the grooves to find a track. Apparently even the concept of the cue lever was alien to him.

*cringes* My dad still has the stereo system he built from a kit back in the 70s (I used to know the brand name, but right now I can't think of it). My parents still have lots of records around and one of my early memories is my dad teaching me the correct way to use the turntable. All those buttons and levers! Much more fun then a CD player.
I even had a little turntable that I played my score to Cinderella on and this was only in mid to late 80s.

[hajario]

[quote=Achren]*cringes* My dad still has the stereo system he built from a kit back in the 70s (I used to know the brand name, but right now I can't think of it). /QUOTE]

Heathkit?

[asterion]

Originally Posted by fishbicycle

I've mentioned this before, but for this thread, it bears repeating. A kid came to work at the radio station, and he was asked to transfer a record. He had to ask how the turntable worked. He had never seen one. Inside of two minutes, he had demolished the record and the stylus on a $200 cartridge by scraping it across the grooves to find a track. Apparently even the concept of the cue lever was alien to him.

What the heck is a cue lever?

[picunurse]

Does Bang and Olufsen still make the turntable with the fixed arm? The arm was attached to the rear edge of the TT box and tracked straight across.
I had one for a week, back in the late '70s, but it was stolen.

[Achren]

Originally Posted by hajario

Heathkit?

Yes! Thank you.

[Spoons]

Originally Posted by asterion

What the heck is a cue lever?

A little lever you find (usually) back near the tone arm swivel, where the arm is anchored to the unit itself. Move the cue lever to the Up position, the arm rises straight up. Move it to Down, and the arm lowers straight down onto the record. The beauty of using the cue lever is that the chance of scraping the needle across the record while trying to put it up or down while "freehanding" the tone arm is impossible.

[fishbicycle]

Originally Posted by asterion

What the heck is a cue lever?

It's the mechanism attached to the tonearm that lifts it up and holds it over the surface of the record, while you position the stylus over a track, then sets it down gently in the grooves.

[fishbicycle]

I just looked up Bang & Olufsen, and it looks like they don't make a turntable of any kind anymore. Linear tracking tonearms were impeccable in design and theory, but they only worked well on new, previously-unplayed-on-any-turntable records. If you played well-used records that had only ever known a pivoting tonearm, on the LTT, you'd hear groove distortion in one channel at the beginning, gradually becoming absent in the middle, then groove distortion on the other channel as the stylus got nearer the label.

I have a BIC linear tracking turntable that's been in a box for 20 years for this very reason.

[Thudlow Boink]

Originally Posted by velvetjones

I had somehow completely forgotten that records have two sides and needed to be turned over. How could I forget that?

But do you remember how some 8-track tapes would



pause and


Ka-CHOONK



in the middle of a song?

[asterion]

Originally Posted by Spoons

A little lever you find (usually) back near the tone arm swivel, where the arm is anchored to the unit itself. Move the cue lever to the Up position, the arm rises straight up. Move it to Down, and the arm lowers straight down onto the record. The beauty of using the cue lever is that the chance of scraping the needle across the record while trying to put it up or down while "freehanding" the tone arm is impossible.

Are you sure that's English? That's the beauty of a laser, the chance of scraping the CD is impossible.

As you can tell, I've never used a record player in my life. Unless you count those old Fisher-Price ones that used hard plastic records. And I'm still not sure how the heck you find a track on vinyl.

[chowder]

BBC news reported last week that[/i] records made of vinyl[i] are making a comeback.

That'll screw up many a sprog whose existence thus far has only witnessed CDs

[chowder]

asterion How to find a track on vinyl.

Experience dear boy, experience

[Sean Factotum]

Originally Posted by Thudlow Boink

But do you remember how some 8-track tapes would
pause and
Ka-CHOONK
in the middle of a song?

To this day, when I hear Meat Loaf's "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad", in my mind it still fades out halfway through the song, Ka-Choonks, and then fades up.

[tdn]

Cue levers also came in two styles -- good and sucky. With the good ones, you could pull the lever quickly and the tone arm would still glide down gently. With the sucky ones, the tone arm would fall like a hammer.

Finding songs on a record was easy. Songs had the grooves close together, while the silences between the songs had the grooves farther apart. If there were, say, four songs on a side, then there's be four bands of close groves, seperated by bands of wide grooves. If you wanted to play just the fourth track, you'd place the stylus just outside of the innermost song band.

In fact, I got pretty good at finding the good parts of songs just by looking at the color of the grooves. On some albums, I might notice that where the bands got darker and bumpier was where the hot guitar solo started.

Records scratched, they warped, you had to turn them over, styluses broke (and could be expensive to replace), you couldn't dance in the same room without the record skipping -- all in all, it's a technology that I don't miss. I can't fault youngsters for not knowing a technology that they've thankfully never had to deal with.

But here's a story that will make you shudder: When I was maybe in kindergarten, I took one of my parents' records to show and tell. Since I knew all about needles and grooves and the spiral pattern they made, I figured I could play it at my desk. Since I couldn't really spin the record, I figured I could move the needle around in a spiral pattern. And I figured that since I didn't have a real needle, some other metalic sharp object would work. Like the sharp end of a pair of scissors.

I wanted to make sure I played that record real good. So I pressed down with the scissors really really hard, as a traced a spiral pattern. Hmm, the record didn't play. And I'd left a deep mark in the record. Obviously I did something wrong, but what was it? Ah, it was clear. I'd been playing the wrong side...

[Really Not All That Bright]

Has the kid never seen a DJ before? Most of the really good ones have moved onto CDs, but there are a million amateurs and semi-pros (not to mention pretty much any competitive DJ) using vinyl and turntables.

[RealityChuck]

Originally Posted by Thudlow Boink

But do you remember how some 8-track tapes would
pause and
Ka-CHOONK
in the middle of a song?

Some? Nearly all of them. It was very difficult to divide an album into four equal sections (especially if you didn't move tracks around -- which was also done).

[Man With a Cat]

Originally Posted by Sean Factotum

To this day, when I hear Meat Loaf's "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad", in my mind it still fades out halfway through the song, Ka-Choonks, and then fades up.

Frampton Comes Alive:

"Do you feeeeeel, KA-CHONK.....like we dooooo?"

[Anaamika]

I'm an 80's child, born in '75, but we had a turntable. I used to listen to the Disney records, they had these little plastic inserts that made them fit. Kids now will never understand the fun of making everyone sound like chipmunks by speeding it up.

And I used to be pretty good at finding the right song. You had to set it down carefully, the rings were the songs or something, and you could find it if you were good. And yes, you couldn't drag the needle across or you'd scratch the record.

[Anaamika]

I forgot one more thing - a brand-new record on a good record player has a sound that's never been matched.

[gigi]

Originally Posted by asterion

And I'm still not sure how the heck you find a track on vinyl.

There's a blank-looking space between tracks and you manually set the needle down there. After steeling yourself and taking a good look. My father always used a higher-end turntable which had no automatic arm movement, but us kids had one with a button that automatically placed the needle at the beginning of the record. You could always pick it up after that and skip around. Pop had about 7000 records at his peak but has moved a few times and winnowed it down to a few hundred, transcribing the rest to an even more obscure format, reel-to-reel tape.

Re the OP, a friend of mine had heard a song on the radio which I happened to own. I played the first side of the cassette and it ended and she said, "It wasn't on there!" I had to explain the concept of a cassette which has two sides and must be flipped over. j/k she was old enough to know better but was used to CDs.

[Kevbo]

The demise of vinyl has obsoleted my favorite IQ test for dates:

I had a couple of alblums I'd transferred to cassettes, where the record had skipped/repeated while I was taping them...One line of the song would repeat maybe three or four times before I was able to bump the turntable.

I got pretty good a timing a slap on the dashboard so that it appeared that this caused the tape to stop repeating.

A couple of dates looked at me puzzled "Tapes can't do that!" I then knew those girls were the keepers.

[velvetjones]

Originally Posted by Hodge

To be honest, I'm shocked that that they even sell turntables. I haven't actually seen a turntable outside of dedicated audiophile stores in several years. I think you'll find that's the Double Six. BTW, I completely agree with you, it's an outstanding bebop album with some awesome vocalese scatting. It doesn't quite reach the heights of Dizzy Gillespie at Newport, though.

Double Six...of course you're right. I was going from memory. My bad.

[Tully Mars]

I remember the first time I took an 8-track tape apart. Yeah, I took everything apart. My first impression was, "Damn, it's a wonder these things ever work." I had one of the quadra-phonic decks in my first pickup. Great marketing, that. Pay more money for half the music.

Then cassettes came, with auto-reverse. Cool stuff.

The I got a good Sansui receiver and turntable and Bose 301's. Thank goodness for Columbia house. They enabled me to acquire a bunch of vinyl all at once. And it sounded soooo good. I discovered that there were more than two kinds of music (Country and Western).

Oh, those were the days. I should dust off the stack of vinyl when I get home tonight.

[Dragwyr]

Originally Posted by fishbicycle

It's the mechanism attached to the tonearm that lifts it up and holds it over the surface of the record, while you position the stylus over a track, then sets it down gently in the grooves.

[Nitpick]I think you mean "Groove". There was only one groove per side on vinyl records. [/Nitpick]

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by tdn

Records scratched, they warped, you had to turn them over, styluses broke (and could be expensive to replace), you couldn't dance in the same room without the record skipping -- all in all, it's a technology that I don't miss. I can't fault youngsters for not knowing a technology that they've thankfully never had to deal with.

Plus you needed those lint rollers to clean the record before you played it, and a little brush to clean the dust off the needle when the sound started going bad.

When I was in college I built my collection by taping everyone else's records (reel to reel tape, 5 albums per reel.) I got quite good at being able to get the tape recorder off pause just seconds before the music would begin, minimizing the scratches of blank vinyl.

Two things about needles. One, they are good antennas. MIT dorm phones at the time were dial, obviously, but the connection made a signal that probaby is being received at distant stars today. If someone in the next room made a call while I was taping, the clicks got picked up on the needle and thus onto the tape. While I have the CD of Sgt. Peppers now, the last chord of Day in the Life still seems missing something without the click-click-click I captured while taping it.

Second, needles are sharp. When I was a kid we had a little record player. Somehow one night my brother fell out of bed, gashed his face on the needle, and had to get taken to the emergency room by my parents. I'm going by hearsay on this, since I never woke up during the whole crisis.

[fishbicycle]

Originally Posted by Dragwyr

[Nitpick]I think you mean "Groove". There was only one groove per side on vinyl records. [/Nitpick]

You may want to take that up with the people at Neumann or Scully, who made lathes with the provision to vary the number of grooves per inch when cutting a master disc.

Of course, I know what you mean.

[tdn]

Originally Posted by Voyager

Two things about needles. One, they are good antennas. MIT dorm phones at the time were dial, obviously, but the connection made a signal that probaby is being received at distant stars today.

Most radio signals would only be received by nearby stars. Sheesh, leave it to MIT students!

Second, needles are sharp. When I was a kid we had a little record player. Somehow one night my brother fell out of bed, gashed his face on the needle, and had to get taken to the emergency room by my parents. I'm going by hearsay on this, since I never woke up during the whole crisis.

I've got two problems with this. For one, I don't remember needles being that sharp. I thought they were a pointy yet dull hunk of diamond. I used to run my finger tip over them.

Second, don't the needles usually point down? In order for your story to be true, your brother would have to have fallen out of bed, onto the record player which for some reason was on the floor (Why in Og's name was something in a boy's room not put away?!?), and his head would have riccocheted off the platter, and bounced up to the arm, which would have been suspended a good seven or more inches from the platter, to upside-down implale its giant needle of death clear through his cheek.

Naw, doesn't sound likely. I submit that they used it as an excuse to go out for ice cream without you, as they probably never really loved you in the first place.

[flodnak]

Originally Posted by asterion

And I'm still not sure how the heck you find a track on vinyl.

It's quite simple, really. In between each song is a narrow ring of vinyl where the groove is much less tightly spiraled, so much so that it looks smooth compared to the grooved appearance where the actual music is located. Position the needle over the appropriate "smooth" ring and pull the cue lever forward. Presto! You can easily start the record at any song you choose.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by tdn

Most radio signals would only be received by nearby stars. Sheesh, leave it to MIT students!

No - old MIT students. I figured 35 light years away qualified as distant.

I've got two problems with this. For one, I don't remember needles being that sharp. I thought they were a pointy yet dull hunk of diamond. I used to run my finger tip over them.

Second, don't the needles usually point down? In order for your story to be true, your brother would have to have fallen out of bed, onto the record player which for some reason was on the floor (Why in Og's name was something in a boy's room not put away?!?), and his head would have riccocheted off the platter, and bounced up to the arm, which would have been suspended a good seven or more inches from the platter, to upside-down implale its giant needle of death clear through his cheek.

Naw, doesn't sound likely. I submit that they used it as an excuse to go out for ice cream without you, as they probably never really loved you in the first place.

This being a cheapo kids player, without a cue lever, the arm was free to raise up to 90 degrees. Which meant that you could indeed drag the needle over the record, but we basically only had kids singles, which had grooves about a quarter inch thick.

How my brother managed this I don't know, being asleep at the time, but he is quite clever. He's no longer accident prone which is lucky since he used to skydive quite a bit, and never bounced.

BTW, my Mom always liked me best.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by flodnak

It's quite simple, really. In between each song is a narrow ring of vinyl where the groove is much less tightly spiraled, so much so that it looks smooth compared to the grooved appearance where the actual music is located. Position the needle over the appropriate "smooth" ring and pull the cue lever forward. Presto! You can easily start the record at any song you choose.

And getting the needle positioned right over the space between the tracks is a skill you develop with time.

Question for someone who used to be a deejay - did the radio version of records have bigger between track spaces, or did the records get cued up in the right place and then spun up to speed?

[tdn]

Originally Posted by Voyager

No - old MIT students. I figured 35 light years away qualified as distant.

Ah. So you're a member of the Quarter Century Club. Don't get me started. No wonder your parents never loved you.

I don't suppose that by any coincidence you knew Mike Bromberg? Or Carol Navotsky?

[fishbicycle]

The records were played up to the first sound, the motor stopped and the turntable rotated backward by hand to an appropriate distance for the platter to get up to speed. Usually a quater turn, although later, direct-drive turntables would start up in .1 second or less.

[RealityChuck]

Originally Posted by Voyager

And getting the needle positioned right over the space between the tracks is a skill you develop with time.

Question for someone who used to be a deejay - did the radio version of records have bigger between track spaces, or did the records get cued up in the right place and then spun up to speed?

No. The records provided to radio stations were usually no different than the ones you'd buy in a story; they just had "Promotional Copy" stamped on the cover.

How it worked: pro turntables got up to speed in about a quarter turn. You'd place the needle in the track space, manually rotate the turntable until you heard the first sound from the track, then rotate backwards a quarter turn.

[Caricci]

This is all bringing me back, even though we have always had a turntable. My mom wouldn't let us touch hers so I'm afraid to touch this one because it's my husband's. Isn't that kind of sad?

I did have my own when I was a kid and, yes, you could not only find tracks but, with practice, find parts of tracks by learning to read the lines in the disk. I used to like to play songs at the wrong speed sometimes.

The very bad, horrible downside of having a turntable is when your six year old discovers that it's used for playing Daddy's old KISS albums.

[MaxTheVool]

Why all the disdain for young people who haven't used a record player? So? Do you disdain people who don't know how to use a mimeograph machine? How about a wax cylinder phonograph? Or a crank-start automobile?

Old, crappy technologies give way to new, better ones. The fact that you grew up with the old technology and have nostalgia for it doesn't mean that young folk have some responsibility to be aware of it and conversant with it.

Originally Posted by Anaamika

I forgot one more thing - a brand-new record on a good record player has a sound that's never been matched.

I strongly question this assertion.

[rowrrbazzle]

There was a device that could sense the spaces between LP tracks with infrared, allowing you to (IIRC) program tracks and use a remote control to select tracks. It'd detect quiet passages as spaces, though. I've forgotten the name of it.

Originally Posted by Dragwyr

[Nitpick]I think you mean "Groove". There was only one groove per side on vinyl records. [/Nitpick]

[hyper-nitpick]most vinyl records.

http://www.snopes.com/music/media/groove.htm [/hyper-nitpick]

[gigi]

Originally Posted by MaxTheVool

Why all the disdain for young people who haven't used a record player? So? Do you disdain people who don't know how to use a mimeograph machine? How about a wax cylinder phonograph? Or a crank-start automobile?

Old, crappy technologies give way to new, better ones. The fact that you grew up with the old technology and have nostalgia for it doesn't mean that young folk have some responsibility to be aware of it and conversant with it.

But they still exist and clearly are sold, where this kid works.

[Gala Matrix Fire]

If anybody's looking for a turntable after reading this thread, Big Lots is selling some neato looking retro style radio/turntable thingies. Neat stuff.

[Miller]

Originally Posted by MaxTheVool

Why all the disdain for young people who haven't used a record player? So? Do you disdain people who don't know how to use a mimeograph machine? How about a wax cylinder phonograph? Or a crank-start automobile?

Yeah, except that as has been noted, turntables are not obsolete, and are still widely sold. If Circuit fucking City carries them, that alone is proof that they aren't some speciality or niche item. And note that the kid in question was the person selling the OP the turntable. Even if it were unreasonable to expect a young person to know what a turntable is, it's not unreasonable to expect an employee of an electronics store to know what the hell his store is selling.

And that's not nostalgia speaking. The only vinyl record I've ever owned was the one that came with Billy and the Boingers. All the music I've ever owned has been digital.

[MaxTheVool]

Originally Posted by Miller

Yeah, except that as has been noted, turntables are not obsolete, and are still widely sold.

They are sold only to people with very special requirements... they are not now a mas market item or anything even close to it. I personally have not used one in 20 years, and I don't think I'm unrepresentative.

If Circuit fucking City carries them, that alone is proof that they aren't some speciality or niche item. And note that the kid in question was the person selling the OP the turntable. Even if it were unreasonable to expect a young person to know what a turntable is, it's not unreasonable to expect an employee of an electronics store to know what the hell his store is selling.

The cashier at Circuit City should recognize every item sold at the store, even very obscure and obsolete ones? Well, maybe in an ideal world, but I can't get all motivated to mock them if they don't.

[Monty]

I've never had any problem finding a turntable over the last 16 years. What's a problem is finding the right needle for the things!

[Spoons]

Originally Posted by fishbicycle

The records were played up to the first sound, the motor stopped and the turntable rotated backward by hand....

And because you could hear the sound as you rotated the record backward (at least, I could), this technique naturally allowed us to search for the backwards Satanic messages that some said were there.

We never found any. But it was funny to listen to!

[Miller]

Originally Posted by MaxTheVool

The cashier at Circuit City should recognize every item sold at the store, even very obscure and obsolete ones? Well, maybe in an ideal world, but I can't get all motivated to mock them if they don't.

Dude. Circuit City. If it's being sold there, it's neither obscure nor obsolete. We're talking about the K-Mart of electronic goods, here, not some high-end speciality shop. A lot of people still listen to vinyl records. A lot of contemporary bands are still releasing vinyl records. It's not a dead format by any means. It's just not the standard any more.

[fishbicycle]

Originally Posted by Monty

I've never had any problem finding a turntable over the last 16 years. What's a problem is finding the right needle for the things!

Here is the link that will take you to a place where you can buy a replacement stylus for virtually any cartridge.