Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Think About It

Recently I decided to give myself some treats, so I went out and purchased a turntable. For those who don’t know what that is, it is an device to play the old 33 and a third vinyl’s I’ve been hanging on to for so many years. Then I had to purchase a machine to power the sound to speakers.
So I hook them all up like I had done through so may years before with cables and plugs.
Now I can hear those old scratchy records I grew up with, but not so fast.
Yes, there was sound, but it was more that scratchy. It was awful. Fuzzy vibrations with caustic words and music filled the room.
“What the…” I thought.
I had just bought a brand new turntable that could plug into a computer and a brand new 200-watt power device to deliver this wonder sound and all I get was this crap.
I powered off the system and tried another record, with the same results.
I thought maybe the vinyl had been affected by being in a harsh environment, even though they were protected inside their paper covers and wooden boxes. Maybe the old songs of my past had become unplayable.
I checked the instructional manual and there was no information on why the sound was so bad.
I did notice there was a not about hooking up the ground wire.
Ground wire? There was no ground wire on this 2010 model turntable. I remember old models having that little u-shaped wire that was screwed to the amplification system to make the turntable accessible, but there was NO GROUND WIRE!.
So I slept on the situation.
Maybe I’ll put all my records out on ebay or give them to friends. Maybe I’ve just spent money on something that doesn’t work. Should I go out and sue the company or just chuck it in the trash?
But after a few thoughts on the problem, I wondered what marvels had technology created to take away the ground wire?
Taking out the plugs from the “phono” section and plugging in the two RC plugs into the “CD” section, I powered up and…..

Like magic, pure sound came out of the small speakers.
It is amazing what can happen when you “think” about it.

4 comments:

Art said...

phew!!!

Anonymous said...

So, are you saying you hooked the turntable up to your CD player/amp and then the sound was normal?

Art said...

Makes me wonder if there was a phono pre-amp built into the turntable AND Cliff was running through a SECOND phono pre-amp as well.

Aon't technology GRAND?!

TripleG said...

I did the same thing until I also realized the turntable was outputting a different level of signal and the CD input, not the traditional phono, on the amplifier made sense.
I still don't know what the many tiny buttons on the side of my phone do (any 9-year-old would).