Comments by "John h Palmer" (@johnhpalmer6098) on "Technology Connections"
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dandanthetaximan OK, I was wrong. Because he was talking about multiple LP sets of the 60's and not being familiar with this particular LP, I assumed it might've been a reissue, when in fact, it's a US pressing, not sure if original or not as London is used here in the US, Decca in most of Europe, thanks to Discogs, though it may still be a reissue, but a later issue, perhaps from the late 70's or early 80's, assuming it was issued that long.
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A couple of things to keep in mind with most, if not all changers is, the cheap cartridge. Most older units through the 60's used crystal carts, later ones like from BSR used a ceramic version and they all utilize the lowest form of stylus shape, the conical or spherical tip so vertical tracking angle is itself a moot point, with better tips like the elliptical stylus were more sensitive to this angle, with the elliptical stylus being the less sensitive of the better tip shapes such as the Shibata.
Plus, most changers had higher tracking forces, up to 5g if not a bit more with some models (think of the cheap Crosley cruiser models) and in some cases, you can see a wear ring ON the playing surface with some LP's that may show up during playback.
Also, with 78rpm playback, you need a stylus designed for 78's, so many of the older ceramic/crystal carts utilized a flip needle with one side for LP, the other for 78.
However the changer you had may have had a cheap MM cart on it, but still with a conical stylus, thus not ideal for 78rpm playback unless you swapped out the stylus for one made for 78rpm records.
Technically the outer edge of the LP has a semi rounded profile, that is technically what actually touches the previous record played, not the actual grooves, so once dropped likely the outer edge of the LP takes the wear, not the grooves itself.
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I stumbled onto your channel through a random suggestion from YT this morning and while I'm well familiar with the cassette format, and have had tapes since the mid 70's, beginning with a K-Mart shoe box style recorder from 1975 with crappy K-Mart tapes to go with that got me going with tape recording all kinds of things with it.
I did gradually upgrade to a true stereo component deck, a low end Sanyo from the mid 80's that I still have and soon to pick up a vintage Pioneer CT-F2121 tape deck, their entry level deck from the mid 70's, though to get there, I had moved from the cassette deck in a Hitachi all in one from the late 70's with AGC to a Sansui rack system with a component deck with, again AGC (and it was a crappy deck as was the rest of the system) and was given the Sanyo for my birthday in 1986 and the Pioneer will be my best cassette deck ever but still, I love the cassette format for many reasons.
That said, loved listening to the demo of the various types as demonstrated here and even though I use a full blown desktop PC with a separate receiver and speakers, and even with YT compression, I could definitely distinguish the crappy type 1 with the better type 1, and the other types were more subtle, but if you knew what to listen for, you could detect them as well, and it was more the dynamic range and how well they took the higher peaks (or didn't) and the upper frequencies did show up more as well over the compression, but so did the midrange a little.
I have found that the doped ferrics (what most type II tapes were) did both the treble and bass quite well, thanks to the benefits of both the ferric oxide and the cobalt etc doping agents, and thus was a good type to use for most things at a reasonable price for most folks and still sound great.
Your information was mostly accurate and very informative, especially for those wondering at what all the fuss is about with the cassette format. I have heard that with Dolby S and HX-Pro with metal tapes, one can match if not surpass CD in quality, though I can't verify that as I never had a deck with either.
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@jwalker7567 I don't think that's correct. We have split phase 240 in the US, which is for dryers, stoves etc that need a full 240V. For my dryer (electric), the heating element needs both sides of the 240V to work and I don't think we even have 10Amp in new construction/electrical upgrades now either. My house is old, initially built in 1908 and likely didn't have electricity initially and may have had gas lighting for a while in the beginning, maybe a hybrid of both. Anyway, 2 additional bedrooms were added to augment the single bedroom it had in the mid 80's and the electrical service was upgraded to modern 200A/240V service but using a Federal Pacific circuit breaker panel which were a known issue even then, but still installed in thousands of homes at the time. I had it replaced when I bought the place in 2016 for the reason of it being an unsafe design.
Anyway, the dryer requires both halves of the 120V, though technically, it's really 122V per side so 244V total to make the heating element work, so when the timer began to go, half the time I got no heat. Then the following year, the start switch for the dryer motor went bad and it killed one side of the split phase 240V, disabling the heating element to even operate.
Once I cleaned the contacts and put it all back together, it's been working just fine.
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