Well, it’s official, I’m sick. I have a sore throat and my muscles constantly feel like they’re recuperating from some heavy workout. Generally, I feel weak. Still haven’t done my creative thing for today but I better get to it because I need my sleep tonight.
Yesterdays creative thing was pretty serendipitous. The alleyway behind my office can sometimes be a haven for awesome stuff that somebody has left for junk. For example, this beautiful old Magnavox record player console. I only had to think for a short moment before deciding that I was going to take it. I rolled it into the kitchen area at my office and proceeded to strip it like a nice car in a bad neighborhood. I needed some extra tools but by the end of the day I had everything out of it.
I know there must be some of you out there thinking “What have you done!? That’s a valuable old record console!” I looked it up on Ebay and saw something similar selling for up to 300.00 dollars. I see that angle but I don’t have the space or the interest in flipping a large record console. On the other hand, I think what was inside was a treasure trove of awesome vintage stuff. There was the record player, which appears to be in good quality and seems rather simple to get working. Then, there was the two 12in. woofers and the enormous horns for tweeters. The horns are very cool and I would definitely like to find a good use for them. There was the AM/FM tuner which I’m not sure If I’m going to use or if I could figure out even how to use it. I may strip it for components. Finally there was a the sweet vintage netting and wood trellis which covered the speakers.
One idea that has come to mind that would use the record player would be a record player that hangs on the wall. Back in the day there was that high quality CD player that mounted vertically on your wall with glass doors that would open with the wave of your hand, well why not a record player. You could use a ball and chain as a weight to keep the needle on the record.
If you’ve got an idea, leave it in the comments. I’d love to hear some ideas.
Comments
5 responses to “Day 192 / One Man’s Junk”
i admire your can do attitude. i had a giant organ which I took apart. tried to use the tank for a reverb unit: kind of sucked. tried to use the leslie speaker, but could never get it to work right. i ended up using the speakers for awhile. in the end I was glad i attempted any of it. i am expecting you will think of something crafty. maybe you can make giant mics out of the speakers.
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/02/how-to_make_a_three-pendulum_rotary.html
You could completely drop the concept of the record player for producing music, and instead use it just for it’s rotation.
I was imagining replacing the bottom pendulum which holds the drawing surface with the record turning.
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Idea #2.
You could make a marble or light triggered sequencer with it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RScVAiUphvQ
Thanks guys! Marc, those are some great links. I think I will do one of them. The three pendulum rotary thing is awesome and the spinning of the drawing surface would be an added element to the original, which is interesting to me.
The sequencer video was great. At first I thought it might be a little advanced for me but then I thought about small circuit kits like the MFOS Weird Sound Generator or the Bugbrand Weevil and then just modding the knobs for photocells. That wouldn’t be too complex and potentially super cool!
Thanks for the links! Very inspiring.
[…] Day 192 I took apart an old magnavox record console that I found in an alleyway. I proposed for people to […]
Vertical turntables, as you wondered about, are actually a thing of reality, or at least they were. A number of companies made them. Most worked well at first but as they aged and parts came out of alignment they got harder to work with. If you have sufficient patience though, and if you keep an eye on craigslist or ebay, they can be found. Consider this one, for example:
http://www.retrothing.com/2006/07/upright_turntab.html
Technics mad a number of different vertical models, the SL-6 and the SL-7 are the models that come to mind, but I know there were others. A few companies also made recordplayers suspended in such a fashion that they had a tonearm on both sides of the record so that you could play both sides of the record without flipping it. There was a lot of ingenuity in the turntable design world, that’s for certain!
If you’re looking for interesting turntables to do projects with, there are two main types of turntables, belt-drive and direct drive. The direct drive turntables use a motor/bearing assembly that relies on magnetic induction to spin the turntable, no belt to wear out and quartz crystal controlled speed. By varying certain parameters, you can control the drive speed and very precisely control the platter rotation. If you were to adapt such a mechanism with an addressable control module, you could use a computer to control the turntable, vary the speed, etc… the possibilities are endless. Have fun!