What and when was your first turntable.

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by hyntsonsvmse, Apr 27, 2022.

  1. normanr

    normanr Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
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    I got a BSR turntable when I was in my teens. Don’t remember much about it other than it was the first time I set up a turntable, installed a cartridge, balanced the arm etc. “Upgraded” to a Garrard 86SB and then a Pioneer PL12D within a few years but I still think the BSR looks cool.
     
  2. Fruff76

    Fruff76 L100 Classic - Fan Club President

    My first real one, non all in one, was a Music Hall MMF-5 in 1999.
     
  3. Bert Oz

    Bert Oz Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Great thread, brought back some really happy memories. JVC L-A11 with a JVC AS5 amplifier in 1980 just as I was starting sixth form (age 16 in the UK). Can't recall the speakers but no match for my Dad's Mordaunt Short in his system downstairs. Had it in my bedroom and played the sherbert out of it, sometimes even before heading out to school in the morning. Had to leave it behind for a while as I headed to London for University two years later.
     
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  4. Some time around 1970 my little sister was gifted this turn table. Soon she grew weary of its offerings and gave it to me....I still have it and it still works properly, after rebuilding the mechanism that is.
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    This was my sole turn table for a good long while.
    Then, some time in the early 2000's I purchased a Music Hall MMF-7 turntable to replace the venerable Fisher Price....Mostly due to a very limited record selection for the Fisher Price table....The ten songs are good and all but at some point a guy's gotta expand his tastes.
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    I have been happy with this turntable ever since and it has been trouble free once properly set up and isolation feet installed.
     
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  5. Paul G

    Paul G Senior Member

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    My parents had a Magnavox Magnasonic 420 console dating from 1956:



    Around 1969, when I was 6, my parents got me one of these RCA Victor record players (mine had a black base rather than blue):

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    In 1977, the Magnavox was replaced by an Allegro by Zenith all-in-one turntable-receiver-cassette recorder (I could not find an image online of the exact model).

    In 1979, I got my first standalone hi-fi turntable, a Philips AF-777:

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    In 2002, I replaced the Philips with a Technics SL-1200M3D, which remains my current rig:

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    Last edited: May 1, 2022
  6. I started seriously buying and collecting LPs at age eleven in 1969 and got my first stereo system the following year which was mostly Radio Shack store brand 'Realistic' and that was the turntable brand.

    I remember it had skipping issues on several records near the end of the last track and it used to bug the hell out of me (it happened on the first ELP album toward the end of "Lucky Man" where Keith Emerson would come in with the moog solo that closed the song, and near the end of the 'Strictly Genteel' finale for Zappa's 200 Motels). I whined and whined about it and my dad took me to the Radio Shack store to have it serviced and when I got it back they had stuck a wad of white putty with a fishing weight up there in the headshell (I kid you not).

    A couple years later I started saving money from my after-school job and got a better system at Tech HiFi in Framingham MA and that included a Miracord turntable (don't recall the model number). At some point I bought a replacement dust cover for that turntable and it was packaged in a brown cardboard box and that box came in handy because I would carry the dust cover and box with me on record shopping trips to Boston or Framingham on the weekends when I would take a bus in to the city. I was a serious vinyl addict already in my teens and got in the habit of shoplifting LPs (until I eventually got caught by a plainclothes security woman at Jordan Marsh). So I would carry the dust cover box under my arm and conceal a few LPs clamped between the box and my torso and walk out of the store. I got a lot of records that way including Band On The Run by Wings, heh...
     
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  7. John Schofield

    John Schofield There is no replacement for displacement

    Location:
    OH
    Dual 1218 with a Shure M91ED cartridge. I was a high school freshman. The bug had bit.
     
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  8. jn229

    jn229 Forum Resident

    Sorry no pic from 1969 maybe 1970. TD 150 Thorens, do not now the arm's designation number but it was the one with the round ball counter weight.
     
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  9. Adagio

    Adagio Forum Resident

    Sept 1982, 14 years old. My first turntable.

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  10. Mark Veety

    Mark Veety Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Silk Hope NC
    In 1972 I bought a RCA component AM/FM record player with separate two way speakers. Nice system kept it until I bought my Sansui 9090db.

    The department store salesman asked me if I had the $125 in my bank to cover the check. I was amused, "many times that" I said.
     
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  11. COBill

    COBill Forum Resident

    Location:
    Colorado, USA
    Aside from the standard kiddie turntable and the BSR changer on my Juliette AM/FM/Cassette/Changer, my first "real" turntable was the linear tracker in my JC Penney MCS pseudo-rack system.
     
  12. stratmel

    stratmel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento, CA
    1967 - Dual 1019. An Army buddy sent me a Sansui 2000 receiver from the PX in Saigon, so I went down to the local stereo emporium and got the TT with a pair of AR-4x speakers. I still have the speakers, although they need restoration.
     
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  13. Henrik_Swe

    Henrik_Swe Well-Known Member

    I bought a Yamaha stereo when I was 17 back in 1990 - receiver, cd player, tape deck, turntable, speakers. It wasn't one of those one-box solutions but separate units which was a huge plus. I remember paying $800 for it all. Not sure which turntable that was included but I'm sure it wasn't anything decent really (it was $100 if bought separately). Just tried to find photos of these different units out of nostalgic reasons, to no avail, unfortunately. I used this system up until around 2006 for some reason, at which point I bought something way better...
     
  14. pez

    pez Forum Resident

    Location:
    uk
    I was 7 and it was for Christmas. An all in one Panasonic record player, radio and single tape plus speakers. I loved it. Wish I still had it!!
     
  15. SpudOz

    SpudOz Forum Resident

    First turntable purchased with my own money was a Technics SL-5 as well. Bought on the 15th December 1983 (still have the original receipt) with my second ever pay cheque. Still have it and it's still in full working order after a massive service a few years ago.

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  16. TimG

    TimG New Member

    Location:
    Indiana
    Like many here, my first turntable was the Philips GA-212 with an ADC XLM Mk2 cartridge. Sounded quite good in my view. I used it for many years, until it seemed to stop working. No lights, no spin. I then bought an Denon DP-7F with a Grado cartridge. Never liked it nearly as much as the feedback was unmanageable in my set-up. Years later, my son wanted to spin some vinyl because it is cool again, but that did not seem to work either.

    Just recently, I ran across a new electronic board for the GA-212 and bought it. When trying to put it in, it was clear that it was not designed to be user replaceable. Rather than start cutting wires and such, I checked some voltages, and plugged it back together. Then I noticed that the stop light was glowing, but only when the switch was off. Really confused, I did a bit more looking, and I noticed that the original power switch was a button, but I had a toggle. Apparently, I had replaced it some time, but got the toggle upside-down, so the words were backward. I turned it on, but didn't spin when I touched the button. I then wet my finger a bit, and voila! It now works again. Possibly unplugging the internal connections and reconnecting made it happen.

    Only problem now is that the cartridge and mounting sled are not there. We had moved, so I began to search everywhere for it, but I cannot find it. Finally, I looked in the box with the Denon in it (I don't throw much away). No cartridge, but I went ahead and plugged it in, and guess what? It works also. So now I actually have two working turntables, and am waiting on a cartridge mounting sled from Ebay.
     
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  17. allied333

    allied333 Audiophile

    Location:
    nowhere
    My first TT was the stereo system. It had built-in amp and speakers. I remember it used tubes. It was about 1962.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2022
  18. Abe Man

    Abe Man "Wild Parsley"

    Location:
    USA
  19. Abe Man

    Abe Man "Wild Parsley"

    Location:
    USA
    I had the exact same model.
     
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  20. ky658

    ky658 Senior Member

    Location:
    Ft Myers, Florida
    1977 JVC JL- A40, had it for the longest time.
     
  21. allied333

    allied333 Audiophile

    Location:
    nowhere
    I had that stereo too in 1973.
     
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  22. stereoguy

    stereoguy Its Gotta Be True Stereo!

    Location:
    NYC
    1959 Garrard Type A. Which I still have.....and still use!
     
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  23. drmoss_ca

    drmoss_ca Vinyl Cleaning Fiend

    Location:
    NS, Canada
    In 1963, when I was five, my paternal grandparents moved to a bungalow a few hundred yards away from the house where I was born in rural Wiltshire. A retired army major was selling up (we later discovered he was notorious for selling out as well: he had been in charge of a prison full of British POWs in the far east, and when some prisoners escaped he was given the choice of giving up the 'guilty' accomplices, or accepting that a number of innocent men would be executed in their place. He gave up those responsible, and was cashiered with disgrace after the war as a result. He had lived anonymously in this bungalow until he died. I cannot and shall not judge him). There was furniture left behind, and amongst it, unwanted by my grandparents, was a Garrard radiogram, made of teak and full of tubes. It worked for a while in our house, but when my older brother took a Saturday job and bought a Philips record player my mother saw her chance and instructed me to chop it up. So in 1967, when I was nine, I followed instructions and desecrated it. A few years later I would have greedily extracted the electronics, but at that time it all went to light the coal-fired boiler that made our hot water and heated the single radiator in the house. Central heating was not a thing, then, just as I understand it no longer is in the UK, given energy prices.
    After that, there was a Sony turntable and receiver belonging to girlfriend/wife-to-be, and then history repeated itself with a Garrard SP25 Mk IV in the tiny slum in the East End we could afford as medical students (where, incidentally, there was no heating beyond a single paraffin/kerosene heater!)

    Beyond that, very briefly, we moved to Canada, used a Radio Shack POS, moved on to CDs and CD players for years and tens of thousands of wasted dollars before sanity kicked in. Then it was Rega P3, SME 10, and now a second SME 10. No further TT changes are anticipated. Also, heating works rather better than ever before!
     
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  24. Riktator

    Riktator Surfer of the Audio Waves

    Location:
    Pugetropolis
    I'm certain that my first system from Pacific Stereo back in 1973 included an entry level Garrard turntable with a likewise entry level Audio Technica cartridge, paired with a Pioneer integrated receiver. I'm sure a little digging would turn up the exact model. Just owning my own system was a major deal for me. Affording anything other than entry level components was out of the question, except for the Infinity Monitor Jr. speakers.
     
  25. Jim0830

    Jim0830 Forum Resident

    1972 Radio Shack Realistic Modulaire Changer (BSR) with a Shure magnetic cartridge. There is a story to this some of you may like or relate to.

    This turntable was the Best TT of the Good, Better, Best turntables that were bundled with the receiver, speakers and headphones I was buying. I also needed a dustcover for the turntable and a few wires and cables. I had carefully listened and chosen everything I wanted. The cartons containing the gear was all brought out to the cash counter. The cashier gave me the total and I had stayed just under the $200 budget. I breathed a sigh of relief. Now all I had to do was pay and then go home and listen to my new system. This was money I had worked all summer for. Then the salesman asked: "Do you already have a phono preamp?". I said: "But the receiver has a phono input". He explained it was a line level input suitable for a ceramic cartridge, but not a magnetic cartridge like I had chosen. The phono preamp was another $20 which was 18$ less than I had.

    I was so disappointed. I was now faced with picking a less costly component for the system for or not getting headphones or a dust cover in order to get the TT I really wanted. I didn't have a drivers license then, So my dad had driven me up to Radio Shack and waited patiently while I shopped. My dad who had kept his distance and let me shop, stepped up to the counter. He said he would loan me the money, but I couldn't spend money on anything else until I paid him back. He certainly didn't need the money, he loaned me. This was just meant as a lesson in managing money, even I knew that. I had gone from being excited to be buying a stereo and being able to afford this system. Then to being so disappointed and crestfallen as I so close and I was ready to take this system home, but finding out I needed just one more thing. Then I was even more thrilled my father had sported me the money I needed and I had my system. we couldn't get home soon enough.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2022
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