Hit Replay is back again this term for another set of hits, trends and vintage love! Two terms ago, Hit Replay made its debut on the Iron Warrior featuring an article on the beloved vinyl record. As we now know, vinyl records sales have started to rise (and if you didn’t know that, time to jump online to the Iron Warrior website and checkout the lastest Hit Replay article). So now Hit Replay kicks off this term with an article on the lovely record player! Where else to play your vinyl records but on one?
Modern record players, also known as phonographs or turntables are simply devices which reproduce sound that recorded on vinyl records. These are not unlike your cassette players for cassette tapes or your CD players for CDs. They are composed of three main parts: A motor-driven turntable which rotates a plate that the record sits on, a tone arm which holds the cartridge containing the stylus, and finally the stylus itself, which follows the groove track on the vinyl record. Typically a regular record player setup would involve having the record player connected to a pre-amp which raise the low signal levels from the record player to usable levels for the amplifier. An amplifier or stereo receiver then follows next in the signal chain and finally the loudspeakers.
First a bit about the history of record players! The first phonograph was built by Thomas Edison (known as the “Edison Cylinder Phonograph”) in the 1870s and was purely mechanical. The first few versions of the phonograph operated with a large tin cylinder unlike the modern flat disk vinyl record. The phonograph was hand-cranked and produced rough reproductions of the recorded material at best. Thankfully after a few short years, Alexander Graham Bell’s Volta Laboratory made improvements on both the cylinders and styli that were being used in phonographs which improved the reproduction quality. By 1887, Emile Berliner invented what came to be the modern vinyl record which recorded material on a flat disc instead of Edison’s original cylinders.
By the turn of the 20th century, even more improvements were made to phonographs. With better audio quality and faster production times, record players dominated the market. Record players soon became a standard household item to be seen all across North America. Record players of all sorts appeared, many of them loaded with numerous features: from fully automatic turntables, disk changers, and even automatic players which allowed you to select the start track.
Dark clouds appeared over record players and analog technology in the late ’80s and early ’90s when there was a shift into cassettes and compact disk. The pop and scratch free CDs became the more common mode of storage for audio. With the decline of vinyl records, turntables fell out of use, save for those of us who were analog lovers. In recent years however, people hit the replay button and turntables along with vinyl records saw an increase in sales. Audio enthusiasts, Hi-Fi lovers, hipsters, musicians and nostalgic music lovers pushed turntables back into shelves and vinyls back in music stores.
One of the best things (or arguably the worst for some!) about record players is the hands-on experience of listening to a record. A record is placed on the mat of the turntable and an adapter is used depending on the type of record being played: whether it be a 33 1/3 rpm, which came in 12 or 10 inches record; 45rpm, 7inch record or the older 78rpm, 12-inch record. The next step was to select the speed based on the record, and start the turntable drive. The tone-arm was then lifted either using a cueing mechanism, if the turntable is equipped with one, or manually with your hand. The needle is then carefully and gently placed onto the leading track of the record. As the record spins, the variations on the groove causes the stylus to vibrate a transducer then converts the mechanical vibrations from the needle into electrical signals. These signals make it through to the pre-amp, the amplifier or receiver and then finally the loudspeakers and voila, music!
Ultimately, record players are loved for their fair reproduction of music while giving it that warm sound only found in analogue devices. There’s no surprise that Hi-Fi lovers, vintage enthusiasts and music fans have a special place for them in their hearts! So why not go out there and buy yourself one!
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