Sick Kitty, New Tech Toy
Sep. 8th, 2016 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogWe have a sick kitty in our house. King is an elderly cat, and has long-term kidney disease, so he's fairly sedate most of the time already. Yesterday though, he was threw up his breakfast and hasn't eaten much since. Nathen is giving him chicken broth which he laps at occasionally. He disappeared for a while yesterday, and I spent twenty minutes looking for him, before locating him under the bench in the foyer; that's where he's been spending most of his time. I suspect he likes the cool tile there. I've been checking in on him frequently, encouraging him to eat and drink, and hoping that he's feeling better soon.
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I spent all of Sunday and Monday with Posi at his new place. We played at least 12, maybe 18, hours worth of Factorio. I'm getting a little bit tired of single-player (though I'm still working at getting some of the achievements 'cause they're fun), but with other people it's like a whole new game. I love the challenge of coordinating multiple hands working on one project. Steam says I now have over 250 hours in on the game, all in all. I think I got my money's worth.
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During one of our brief spans of not playing Factorio, Posi and I went to the nearby thrift store where I made a real score. I'd never even seen a linear tracking turntable before, and I got one at the Goodwill for $15, with the owner's manual. It looks as though it's hardly been used. I'll talk more about what makes linear tracking turntables interesting behind the cut. But here's a picture. Pristine!
Most turntables have a tone arm that pivots on a single point so the stylus can follow the groove. The result is that the stylus addresses the groove at a continually varying angle as it tracks across the record. Linear tracking turntables are an attempt to keep the stylus at a constant angle by putting the tone arm on a movable sled attached to a belt drive and position sensor; the arm moves across the record as it plays, and the stylus stays at approximately ninety degrees to the motion at the point of contact with the record.
The tone arm track
I was thrilled to see this thing sitting on the shelf behind a five CD changer and dug it out right away. I powered it up and was able to find an amp elsewhere in the electronics section that it would connect to. No phono preamp, but I just wanted to see if it would output sound. Posi grabbed a random record from the bins (a Barbara Streisand Christmas album) and it played! It had some issues though. The cue button, which is supposed to raise the tonearm straight up or down from the record, instead made the arm slide a little to one side as it dropped, causing an alarming scratch across the vinyl. I agonized for a while over whether to buy it since $15 is a significant expense for me right now, but I did. Googling around, it looked like it might be something I could fix. So today, I took it apart.
LAB 2000 turntable disassembled
This machine is so beautiful! I found the worm gear that online advice said is coated in a lube that can get old and sticky. I found the optical sensor that detects the arm position and figured out how to adjust it. And then I spent a while pushing buttons and watching the innards work. It's hard to explain why, but I was just thrilled by the fact that a gentle touch to the tonearm will trigger the sensor to run the motor ever so slightly to slide the sled just a little way down the track to keep up with the groove of the vinyl. It's elegant, and elegant machinery makes me so happy to watch.
This is the bottom of the platform the record rests on. The dots are part of another elegant solution that I love seeing on turntables; the stroboscopic timing system. You'll note two sets of silver dots. These are for timing the spin for 33⅓ and 45 RPM records, respectively. As the platter spins, a light that flashes at the frequency of mains power lights them. On this table, you look in a small window in the front and watch the dots. If the platter is spinning at the right speed, the light lights up the dots exactly once for each time the platter spins far enough for the dots to be in the same relatively position. If they seem to be moving forward or backward, you spin the thumbwheel (attached to a potentiometer) to slow it down or speed it up. The elegance here is that you don't need a crystal or something to generate a clock frequency for the timing; you just use the mains. US mains power is 60hz. The second set of dots are for countries with 50hz mains power, where the light will flash 50 times per second instead of 60. (My other turntable has all four sets of timing marks on the edge of the platter; you just have to know which ones to use.)
And lastly, here's a video of the turntable running, naked, that I shot on my phone. I just love seeing all the parts work!
Anyway, after taking everything apart, messing with adjustments, and using the forward and back buttons to run the tonearm end to end a few times, I think the problem might have been resolved. I think it may have just been sticky grease on the worm gear. We'll see once I can get to Kenosha and pick up a record to try it with.
(And no, my opinion on vinyl hasn't changed. I still think it's a giant pain in the ass to play correctly and that it's generally a clunky, annoying format. But...but...at the same time, I really and truly love certain aspects of it too. The fact that you really have a physical manifestation of a sound wave there on a disc is just so cool!)
----
I spent all of Sunday and Monday with Posi at his new place. We played at least 12, maybe 18, hours worth of Factorio. I'm getting a little bit tired of single-player (though I'm still working at getting some of the achievements 'cause they're fun), but with other people it's like a whole new game. I love the challenge of coordinating multiple hands working on one project. Steam says I now have over 250 hours in on the game, all in all. I think I got my money's worth.
----
During one of our brief spans of not playing Factorio, Posi and I went to the nearby thrift store where I made a real score. I'd never even seen a linear tracking turntable before, and I got one at the Goodwill for $15, with the owner's manual. It looks as though it's hardly been used. I'll talk more about what makes linear tracking turntables interesting behind the cut. But here's a picture. Pristine!
Most turntables have a tone arm that pivots on a single point so the stylus can follow the groove. The result is that the stylus addresses the groove at a continually varying angle as it tracks across the record. Linear tracking turntables are an attempt to keep the stylus at a constant angle by putting the tone arm on a movable sled attached to a belt drive and position sensor; the arm moves across the record as it plays, and the stylus stays at approximately ninety degrees to the motion at the point of contact with the record.
The tone arm track
I was thrilled to see this thing sitting on the shelf behind a five CD changer and dug it out right away. I powered it up and was able to find an amp elsewhere in the electronics section that it would connect to. No phono preamp, but I just wanted to see if it would output sound. Posi grabbed a random record from the bins (a Barbara Streisand Christmas album) and it played! It had some issues though. The cue button, which is supposed to raise the tonearm straight up or down from the record, instead made the arm slide a little to one side as it dropped, causing an alarming scratch across the vinyl. I agonized for a while over whether to buy it since $15 is a significant expense for me right now, but I did. Googling around, it looked like it might be something I could fix. So today, I took it apart.
LAB 2000 turntable disassembled
This machine is so beautiful! I found the worm gear that online advice said is coated in a lube that can get old and sticky. I found the optical sensor that detects the arm position and figured out how to adjust it. And then I spent a while pushing buttons and watching the innards work. It's hard to explain why, but I was just thrilled by the fact that a gentle touch to the tonearm will trigger the sensor to run the motor ever so slightly to slide the sled just a little way down the track to keep up with the groove of the vinyl. It's elegant, and elegant machinery makes me so happy to watch.
This is the bottom of the platform the record rests on. The dots are part of another elegant solution that I love seeing on turntables; the stroboscopic timing system. You'll note two sets of silver dots. These are for timing the spin for 33⅓ and 45 RPM records, respectively. As the platter spins, a light that flashes at the frequency of mains power lights them. On this table, you look in a small window in the front and watch the dots. If the platter is spinning at the right speed, the light lights up the dots exactly once for each time the platter spins far enough for the dots to be in the same relatively position. If they seem to be moving forward or backward, you spin the thumbwheel (attached to a potentiometer) to slow it down or speed it up. The elegance here is that you don't need a crystal or something to generate a clock frequency for the timing; you just use the mains. US mains power is 60hz. The second set of dots are for countries with 50hz mains power, where the light will flash 50 times per second instead of 60. (My other turntable has all four sets of timing marks on the edge of the platter; you just have to know which ones to use.)
And lastly, here's a video of the turntable running, naked, that I shot on my phone. I just love seeing all the parts work!
Anyway, after taking everything apart, messing with adjustments, and using the forward and back buttons to run the tonearm end to end a few times, I think the problem might have been resolved. I think it may have just been sticky grease on the worm gear. We'll see once I can get to Kenosha and pick up a record to try it with.
(And no, my opinion on vinyl hasn't changed. I still think it's a giant pain in the ass to play correctly and that it's generally a clunky, annoying format. But...but...at the same time, I really and truly love certain aspects of it too. The fact that you really have a physical manifestation of a sound wave there on a disc is just so cool!)
