The Empeg of a different era...

I actually used to own one of these and in a waking moment this morning wondered if any are making the rounds on eBay....what would it take to recreate my turntable of 1972?

It was a remarkable little piece of work, but in the course of one of those life transitions, I sold it. Now to find one that works. This guy says he never installed his!

(edit: this auction has much better pictures)

OK.... being young enough to never have owned vinyl, wtf IS that?

OK.... being young enough to never have owned vinyl, wtf IS that?

Why that, my young lectric, is a tone arm.

All turntables have tone arms, I think, but most of them pivot from a fixed point. Not a big deal in the mono era, but, or so the wisdom went, when stereo LPs came onto the market the changing angle of the stereo stylus -- in relation to the stereo grooves -- could lead to an unhappy reduction in stereo separation on parts of the record.

Enter the Rabco SL8, then SL8E. The idea was to maintain perfect alignment with the groove -- they were referred to, I think, as Rabco tangential tone arms. The tone arm rides in a counterbalanced carriage on rails with jewel bearings. As the record grooves pull the stylus inexhorably to the middle of the LP, the tone arm begins to angle inward away from the tangent. When this happens, it closes an itty-bitty wire contact that powers a little motor that moves the carriage (the ass end of the tone arm) along the rails until the tone arm is back in tangent, the contacts reopen, the motor shuts off....repeat as necessary until LP is finished.

OK, I don't *really* think it was the Empeg of its day -- how could it compare -- but it was pretty neat. They integrated a simplified version of this into a Harmon Kardon turntable, but IIRC it relied on cruder, friction devices to move the arm. The SL8E was the pinnacle of wierd tone arm technology.

The SL8E was the pinnacle of wierd tone arm technology.

Nearly...

There was a Sharp $400 midi "hifi" unit for sale in the UK in the late eighties that used the same technique (though with much less high quality results I suspect). However it had an extra trick up it's sleve, the tone arm could also rotate and move under the record, resulting in the only turntable I have ever seen that has auto reverse like a tape deck.

I bought one for my mother who always moaned about having to turn records over, and it is still going strong...

Nearly...
There was a Sharp $400 midi "hifi" unit...

Yes! and it looks like you can get one on eBay .

I vaguely remember seeing these in the press, and (looking at eBay again) Sharp produced other "liner" turntables. I need to go back and take out "wierd"!!

Yes! and it looks like you can get one on eBay.

That one is a bit different to my Mum's, which is horizontal. I'll have to take a picture next time I'm there.

Although I understand why the linear-tracking tone arms are supposed to be a Good Thing (TM), I never understood this:

If the vast majority of the "target" consumer record players used a fixed-pivot tone arm, then why weren't the vinyl masters cut with a fixed-pivot device in the first place?

Why would the cutting device be deliberately at a different angle than the playback device?

Why would the cutting device be deliberately at a different angle than the playback device?

Lack of ISO standard for tone arm pivot location or arm length? Harder to build a cutter that pivots or moves at a variable angle? The general notion that cutting and playback were "good enough"? Other ideas?

I have to say that while I enjoyed watching that Rabco work, I could not detect an audible difference over the original AR turntable tone arm that it replaced. Not enough of a stereophile, me.

writes a kind member of this BBS (in an e-mail):

No, you need to back and take out "weird"!!

I would go back and take it out (sniff!), but the edit time has expired. I did it twice, too! I must be loosing my mind in my old age. Not a pretty site.