While putting on a brand new record recently, I noticed halfway through the second side I started hearing a scraping sound. It sounded somewhat like sandpaper. I only hear it on the second side, and oddly enough the voices still sounded clear. Occasionally you can hear it on other records, but quieter and toward the very end. What could it be and how can I fix it? It’s a RCA belt drive turntable, your basic plug-in model. Plus, are there any good turntable/record troubleshooting sites you know of?
How old is the cartridge / stylus? They don’t last forever. Do you have a powerful magnifying glass to look at the stylus?
Sounds (heh!) like you’ve got a skating problem. This is a side-to-side force that wants to pull the tone arm to the center of the record.
The question is - does your turntable have an anti-skate control?
If you can post the exact model of your turntable, we can find out.
The turntable is a RCA LAB-1200 Model. The manual doesn’t mention an anti-skate control, but it’s pretty bare bones on troubleshooting. I believe my cartridge (a replacement Pfanstiehl 211-D6C for the original Audio Techica AT3600) is about three years old with a gut guess of 300 hours total use. I’ve never bothered with the stylus; I just replace the cartidge.