Left My Rega Rp6 on for 24 hours

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Dave Calarco, Feb 9, 2016.

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  1. Dave Calarco

    Dave Calarco Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Any chance of anything negative happening by this? I just realized this.
     
  2. Combination

    Combination Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Orleans
    Just spinning and not playing anything? Very unlikely.
     
    Dave Calarco likes this.
  3. Josquin des Prez

    Josquin des Prez I have spoken!

    Location:
    U.S.
    You could probably leave it on indefinitely without a problem.
     
  4. Dave Calarco

    Dave Calarco Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Just spinning, yeah. No vinyl on it. Tonearm resting.

    Ok. Phew. I am not sure how I missed that
     
  5. action pact

    action pact Music Omnivore

    A-OK.
     
    Dave Calarco likes this.
  6. tim185

    tim185 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    You leave your fridge on for 10-20 years at a time right?
    No problem for your TT.
     
  7. Dave Calarco

    Dave Calarco Forum Resident Thread Starter

    thanks. appreciate the responses.
     
    Long Live Analog likes this.
  8. Long Live Analog

    Long Live Analog Forum Resident

    Location:
    West Tn. Mid South
    I had Rega P25 that was left on most of the time for 15 years with no problems or speed issues...
     
  9. jon9091

    jon9091 Master Of Reality

    Location:
    Midwest
    The week before Christmas I had a fall and ended up in the ER with a concussion.
    I think it was on a Thursday, and on Tuesday I realized my RP 6 had been spinning the whole time.
     
    Dave Calarco likes this.
  10. Schwinnparamount

    Schwinnparamount Forum Resident

    Probably spinning as fast as your head? :shake:
     
  11. jon9091

    jon9091 Master Of Reality

    Location:
    Midwest
    Yeah...pretty much! :faint:
     
    Sailfree likes this.
  12. Gavinyl

    Gavinyl Remembering Member

    You'll be OK mate !
     
  13. Dennis Metz

    Dennis Metz Born In A Motor City south of Detroit

    Location:
    Fonthill, Ontario
    Some owners leave them on all the time.
     
    Long Live Analog likes this.
  14. Ntotrar

    Ntotrar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tri-Cities TN
    Been there done that. No worries.
     
    Dave Calarco and CCrider92 like this.
  15. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I left my old Sony turntable on for at least a day once, spinning away, back in the '80s.

    It got stolen long before I found out if that had any impact on its longevity. But running with no load like that will do no real harm - it just shaves 24 hours of running time off that aspect of the lifespan of the turntable. And I doubt that the runtime of the motor is much of a constraint in the lifespan of most turntables - I'd imagine the degradation of belts, capacitors and other mechanical and electronic do-dads are what ultimately send most turntables to the graveyard. Or accidents, for that matter.
     
  16. Dave Calarco

    Dave Calarco Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Oops. I did it again. This time for only like 8 hours. I assume I'm still all good? Gotta be a little more diligent when spinning vinyl at the end of the night.
     
  17. Josquin des Prez

    Josquin des Prez I have spoken!

    Location:
    U.S.
    You are really worrying about nothing. It's a good quality DC motor and won't burn out from it. Leave it on for the rest of the year if you want. It won't hurt anything (maybe a little on your electric bill). I have left my turntable motor on for days at a time without realizing it. No big deal.
     
    Long Live Analog likes this.
  18. dianos

    dianos Forum Resident

    Location:
    The North
    Actually it is recommended letting a new rega deck run a few days without stop. Their motors can be a bit squeaky when new..
     
    Long Live Analog likes this.
  19. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    Most music lovers who are well into vinyl frequently spin and listen for hours and hours on end whenever the chance to do so presents itself. That's what turntables are designed to do. Not sure what you're worrying about. Even the least expensive turntables that are respected around here, stand up to years and years of daily use. Your RP6 is a very good turntable. The only thing that continuous pointless spinning is going to do is wear out the drive belt too soon - perhaps after a couple of years worth of overnight spinning. Then again, spinning with no load needlessly for hours or days might also necessitate a couple of drops of lube oil on the bearing every six months instead of every 18-24 months. Consider though that the really good lubrication used by Rega is designed to hold up perfectly for very long periods of time. Rega and every other manufacturer (and their turntable designers and engineers) know all about every bad habit there is, and they take those bad habits fully into account when designing tables and their component parts. The baseline for all such parts takes fully into account such actions as leaving the table on for hours and hours on end.

    So you won't break the turntable or reduce the quality of the music it generates just because you occasionally leave it on overnight. If it still bugs you, use the alarm feature in your smartphone calendar to set a nightly reminder to hit the button on the external power supply. That'll get you into the habit of turning it off after use.
     
  20. Drewan77

    Drewan77 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK/USA
    Back in my teens (mid '70s) I used to go 'slot-car' racing and those 12v motors relied on copper or brass brushes (little blocks of material, don't know if these were AC or DC motors) that made contact with a split copper collar & transmitted the current as the motor spun. They wore down with time.

    How does a DC turntable motor work - does it have similar contact points which could wear? The replies to this post suggest not
     
  21. Josquin des Prez

    Josquin des Prez I have spoken!

    Location:
    U.S.
    I think this is an apples and oranges comparison, at least in terms of quality. The DC motor in a Rega is likely more costly than a handful of slot cars.
     
  22. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    Turntable motors are brushless. They've been brushless since the '60s; maybe earlier than that. That's one reason why they're so quiet. They're nothing like the wound armature slot car motors with ferrite or leaf brushes. Turntable motors often use so-called Hall elements for rotor position detection. There's more, but you get the idea - different animals entirely. Even if someone could design a quiet DC motor using brushes, the rotational stuttering of the spinning armature would cause terrible vibration, speed variation would require complicated control, along with a whole bunch of other problems.
     
    black sheriff likes this.
  23. inperson

    inperson Senior Member

    Location:
    Ohio
    Man, relax!
     
  24. Drewan77

    Drewan77 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK/USA
    Thanks Agitater, I often wondered & was pretty sure someone on here would know the answer :righton:
     
  25. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    No problem. There are actually still a few AC synchronous motor-driven turntables still in use from the late '40s and the '50s. They were widely used to drive studio/broadcast turntables and to drive tape machines. They're called synchronous because they synced to the alternating current frequency (e.g., 50 CPS in the UK and Australia, 60 CPS in the U.S., Canada, and so on), and didn't need induction to create a magnetic field to impel the rotor. They were very reliable.

    There were also still plenty of AC turntable motors around until fairly recently, but DC seems to have fully taken over. I should have clairifed that in my previous post.

    It's also important to note that a turntable motor spining at a relatively sedate speed, brushed or brushless, is a far cry from the 30,000RPM slot cars motors used back in the day.
     
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