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Rediscovered in the back of the closets, where they had stopped with the appearance of the CDs, or discovered by the younger ones, that with rolled up sleeves they propose to take away all the information they have, and that is so much, the vinyl records wake up from a long night of  (decca, columbia, odeon, rca victor, parlopnon, cbs, thorens, capitol, his master's voice, brunswick, vogue), a true parade of coats of arms,                                    quality assurance  , which gives them the full right to occupy a high place, in all collections, will even be kings at all;  and with their colorful covers, some beautiful ones - an authentic work of art - exert enormous fascination, and an irresistible temptation to have them by our side.
Unfortunately for some it is still a somewhat mysterious world that, together with a lack of experience, leads to not very satisfactory results, with a consequent decrease of interest, and finally to abandonment.  For these, ready to take the first steps is dedicated this page, assuring already with a minimum of effort and knowledge, the result may even be brilliant;  the discs only expect to be placed in a real dish, perfectly controlled, and if in their long life they have not been very mistreated, it will certainly continue to rotate for many years and give us beautiful and unforgettable moments of pleasure; and this is what we are going to deal with:

A turntable can then be divided into three main parts: plate, arm and head, and the degree of importance is not equal between them, but it obeys a certain order, precisely the one described above, which should be taken into account from now on .
First decision: new or used? Used, in my opinion, is very good, the vintage of both of them fits perfectly and they are cheaper, they buy for a few tens of euros, the offer is great, on condition that we are quite demanding in their choice, since surely most will not meet the requirements and we will have to pass them by. We are interested, then, in a beautiful, robust and weighty turntable, if in a better wooden box, of a mark with evidence given; emt, garrard, lenco, technics, thorens, dual, etc ..., (a real luxury !!!) with three speeds, 33, 45 and 78, the latter being able to be varied between 74 and 82 rpm, of 78rpm The noise that the motor coupling to the plate introduces is actually very low and At best the rotor and the plate are built in one piece whereby the plate becomes an integral part of the engine, avoiding this connection that would introduce vibrations, and the starting torque of a DC motor is enormous, which is an advantage ), such as marantz or technics, two masters of electonics, and thorens with double coupling pulley / strap, with speed variation by magnetic field - what a device !!! - are to buy with eyes closed.

The main care is to check that the disk rotates perfectly on its axis, should absolutely describe a single perfect circumference, presented to our eyes as if it were standing, without lateral displacements; the same for the arm that is fixed, any type of undue oscillation automatically eliminates it (remember that the only oscillation that interests us is the one caused by the normal reading of the needle in the disc, that will be transmitted to the head), since it works like a source of noise, which will be strongly amplified; if it is replaceable, the problem is less because at any time we can change it, even making upgrade; the test magnet should be of the moving magnet type, with an output signal ten times higher than the moving coils, and if slightly lower in the frequency response, its output signal is much easier to amplify,(it will need to be amplified by a factor of 100, while with the mcs the factor will be 1000, to reach sufficient signal level to be input to the amplifier, which for the same noise level in the input, in these last will be ten times more high in the output), universal / standard mount format, for easy replacement probably by a higher quality, but having a lot of attention with its assembly since it requires special care of alignments, being this process, let's say a little critical, we truly arrive at the heart of system , and our intervention can make the difference, between a good or bad final result:
Adjust the back of the arm until it is horizontal; adjust the weight of the head to the one indicated by the manufacturer, usually between 3 and 5g and in case of doubts, remember that one disc is slightly worse than the opposite; set anti-skating to the same value; in place of the disc, place a small mirror and gently rest the needle on top, with the current and virtual head perfectly aligned, otherwise align; in a millimeter paper draw a rectangle approximately 18cm by 4cm; draw a center line in the length direction; in this line, trace 3 points, A, B and C, at distances of 2cm, 8.6cm and 14.4cm respectively; at point A make a small hole and stick it on the axis of the dish on top of the disk; move the arm and paper manually and place the needle on point C, and the head should be strictly parallel to the vertical lines of the quadricules if this does not happen to adjust the position of the head and perform the same operation with respect to point B ; also remember that you can not use the 33/45 rpm disc needles on the 78 discs, they do not fit, they are completely different and they destroy them.

The connection to the amplifier part goes through a preamplifier, and here you must opt​​ for active or passive, any of them with their advantages and disadvantages, always with built-in equalizer, the latter part absolutely indispensable, since for technical and During the engraving of the incision the low frequencies are purposely compressed and the accents high, so that at the time of the reading the reverse must be done, thus allowing the sound to return to the original characteristics, and there can be no compromises here: if it is active, or the amplifier has the phono input, and the brand of the device gives us total quality assurance, or will have to be purchased separately, and here too, the quality is truly important: receiving an input signal about 5 millivolts should amplify it to 500 - we are dealing with extremely low signals, - the introduction of noise becomes inevitable - and the worst is that to go It is greatly amplified by the signal and only a good preamp is able to reject and keep the noise inherent to its operation at extremely low levels, which is not a vailable to the weakest;in turn the input impedance should be equal to that of the output of the rotates disks, otherwise there are large signal losses, so we only have left, choose a higher quality, and appliances of 30/40 euros will not be taken into account consideration; if you have a good amplifier with good speakers, (should have high sensitivities) you can opt for a passive preamp, with a high input impedance, 10komhs around, not to overload the source, and a low output impedance, close to zero, ( remember that this impedance next to the intrinsic capacity of the connecting cables makes a low pass filter with its cutoff frequency that should not be in the audio frequency zone, otherwise the high frequencies will be affected), in this case it will not have signal gain , impedance optimization only, but the good quality amp / speakers, far outweighs this low input signal, and reproduces the sound more accurately, you just need to position the volume controller in a higher position, but never anyway will have distortion in the output, and with much more guarantee that the output signal is identical to the input signal, without any type of coloration; on the 78 rpm discs there is still a problem: the riaa equalization is different from the other discs, and worse still, it varies from brand to brand, so that the devenos can control, through various adjustments in the frequencies; the connecting cables from the turntable to the preamp must be of quality and short, reducing the capacitive effect, which modifies the output impedance, unbalancing it with the input of the preamplifier;

If the dish is in a wooden box, and being the most important part of the system, do not rule out the possibility of building another dish, better attenuating the vibrations or resonances; in case of humming, the masses of the rotating disks and the preamp will be placed to the same potential, with a connecting wire, eliminating the hum; in the case of Rumble (low frequencies caused by vibrations in transmission systems and bearings arriving at the plate and from here to the columns - it recalls the imperative at the time of purchase of the turntable to check any lateral displacement, usually caused by wear in the central shaft or bearing, or low quality of the materials?), can be attenuated by oiling with high quality oil the bearings.

A very solid base under the turntable and a little further away from the speakers, can only bring benefits... A small attention can still be paid to the always discussed and almost always ignored the advantage of improving or not the quality of the cable. power supply and its connector; if the rotating disc has a powerful motor and if it also works at 78rpm, I believe that it can only bring advantages, (in the rotation of the disc the motor does not have a constant current consumption, it varies with the friction existing in each point, which is not always equal due to the tolerance of the materials), instantly supplying the requested current, avoiding how to increase the damaging and always present wow and flutter; even in the case of the amplifier, this improvement may be more than necessary and obvious ... because the speakers constantly and continuously vary the current supplied ...
The care to have with the discs, usually refers to three different situations:
A) the worst situation, for which there is no solution, and can only be avoided, perfectly controlling the lowering and lifting of the needle, trying to do it in the spaces without recording, and worse still to avoid any inappropriate transverse movement, normally caused by poor regulation of needle weight, anti-skating or any external vibration that hits the turntable.
B) suggestion that comes with time, but that a good wash in warm water with neutral soap and a soft cloth, can perfectly solve.
C) warping, usually caused by poor storage or temperature variations; with my shellacs, and I have a few hundred, I place one on top of a glass plate inside the oven, as far away as possible from the heat source, at minimum temperature (at any point the hand should be able to enter without burn ) for fifteen to twenty minutes, I remove it and place it on a marble stone with the glass plate on top, and on this something very weighty. I usually do it at the end of the day, for practical reasons taking advantage of the lowering of the temperature of the night, still avoiding being tempted to see the result before the due time, and in the morning is flat like that of Euclid! !! With LP, the procedure is identical, but since they are manufactured in different weights, it requires additional care, in terms of time / temperature. With my Hotel California, very wavy,                             (photo 1), only the third time returned to the original features, (photo 4) but it was with great pleasure to hear the excellent guitar of Felder and Walsh as always, a true music anthem rock Maybe you should try it first with a disc of no great value...
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In mouth al lupo !!!
... and buon ascolto !!!
                                                                 Saluti, of the saints