you burn me up I'm a cigarette

[vostoklake]

I now have a nice second-hand turntable, for purposes of plugging into my 'puter and being able once again to listen to my wild and wacky collection of LPs - even turn them into MP3s once I get a surface-noise deletion system. The only question now is - how do I *assemble* the damn thing? If anyone out there knows how to put a Sharp RP-304 belt drive turntable together - specifically, how to connect the belt - please tell me.

EDIT: Okay, I've figured out how to attach the belt. Now the only problem is the lack of a female-to-female RCA connector in the house. (Heh. Female-to-female connector. Shall I buy those at Dick Smith's, or D-Vice?)

Comments

Techie stuff about vinyl

[rex-anglorum.livejournal.com]

I'm doing the same - i.e. transferring my vinyl collection to digits.

Some things I've found, and which you may find useful:

- if this is the first, last and only time you are going to take your treasured vinyl across to digital, consider hiring a really good record deck. Even scratched and dirty records sound *much* better if recorded onto CD off a Linn Sondek with a fancy cartridge than generic deck and cartridge. You will not be able to afford buying a Sondek, but you might be able to afford hiring one.

- Moving Coil (MC) cartridges get more of the music than moving-magnet (MM) but you'll need a special pre-amplifier to use them. IMHO it's worth delving into the depths of this techie obsession, especially if you are only going to hire the kit once, for ever, and then have done.

- the A/D converters in most sound cards are pretty crap. They are aimed at games players, and giving sensationalistic performance in an environment where lots of noise is present - i.e., inside a PC. The A/D convertors in stand-alone CD-audio recorders are better, but best are the ones in DAT machines and (of course) professional stand-alone A/D convertors. These last are very expensive but can be hired surprisingly cheaply. At least in the UK.

- many Charisma LP's have crackles recorded onto them. [Famous example: the first few bars of "Supper's ready"]. These can never be recovered as the original tapes are AFAIK lost. However, when using de-crackle software, record the original crackly version to CD-R, CD-RW, CD-RAM, whatever is your preference, as well as the de-crackled version; there might always be a better de-crackle software later. If you do this, all you have wasted is a burned CD, which if you wrote down to RW or RAM can always be re-used.

I hope you find this useful

r