Vintage Turntable + No Preamp! #vinyl #turntable #vintage

hey everybody welcome back to recordology listen i am so glad you're here thank you so very much for making time to join us let's say that you've decided to finally put together your record player system your turntable system and maybe you've never put together a sound system before and you know maybe you grew up in an age of digital streaming mp3s and you're just not you know comfortable with all the components needed so you take people's advice you get a vintage turntable for a good price from like a thrift store or something like that second hand store and you got to plug it into your powered speakers or your sound bar and sadly there's no sound or it's really really quiet and then you come to the sad realization that many of us come to and that you need yet another piece of equipment to make this work something called a preamp and you come to another sad realization that many vintage turntables don't come with a built-in preamp that's kind of a modern thing so you need to get something else for your setup that costs money a preamp this is a pretty inexpensive portable preamp but even still these go from 25 up to thousands so how can you get by on the cheap i've got a life hack a pro tip that you can get your preamp game in action for pennies on the dollar you're not going to want to miss this [Music] this is recordology [Music] now if you buy a modern turntable like many of the ones we review right here on this show you're familiar with this that is this little phono line switch that is the almighty preamp now let's take a step back what is a preamp why do you need one basically and we've done shows about all this stuff in detail but as a summary let's just say this any turntable with a magnetic cartridge versus a ceramic is going to need a pre-amp circuit a preamp circuit basically amplifies the audio to what's called line level now line level is required for powered speakers and many stereo systems so you have to have that at some point if your turntable has one built in like this you're fine all you need to do is flip this to line and you're golden some people like to use an external one like this guy right here in which case they set it to phono and then they run the audio out of the record player through the external preamp so not everybody thinks about this when they're putting together a system and it's something you need to think about if you go vintage besides one of those stupid crosleys will probably destroy your vinyl anyway right so we're going vintage we went to the thrift store and picked up this glen burn that looks an awful lot like a bsr changer but it's not 15 20 bucks seems like a great deal it's got four speeds which is kind of weird i don't know why you would want 16 rpm and apparently old people use these 78s or whatever but we're only concerned about 33 and 45 right i really hope you guys are getting the tongue-in-cheek aspect of this there will be some people in the comments what are you talking about anyway so by the way i will say this too glenburn is to bsr what acura is to honda what lexus is to toyota etc etc was actually a subset different company by the same people and the same leader that you know birmingham sound reproducers they kind of split off and did their own thing anyway picture tell the polycom is another analogy so you've got this thing and you're like great we're ready to go i would recommend getting a new cartridge which i did in this case a new shure cartridge new old stock can be had but you flip it around here and you're like oh man this looks different than a modern record player there's like a well there's a power core that's good know what to do with that this weird green thing what's on this it kind of looks like half of my uh montgomery wards wood grain television antenna connector i don't know what that's for then you've got this gray cable okay there we go rca jacks i'm going to plug this right into our powered speakers or with an adapter plug it into you know a bluetooth speaker a sound bar whatever but the sound that comes out is really quiet what is going on well like i alluded to before you need a preamp and these old school turntables they don't have built-in preamps most of the time so this is outputting what is called phono level that is the sound coming out of a phonograph cartridge specifically a magnetic one like this sure that's kind of hiding in this cupped head shell right here it's a lower level it's not a line level it's a phono level signal so we need a preamp circuit in order to amplify that to the appropriate level and like i said a an external preamp 25 30 bucks on amazon ebay you can find them used sometimes but you know if you don't want to invest and it go these go up to hundreds of dollars i mean you get like some higher end ones that we like with the ones we've reviewed these can go for hundreds of dollars and a lot of times if you're trying to put together a system on the cheap you know what i mean you're not wanting to spend that you're not you're not in the market for that you don't have money for that so what are the alternatives i got a great alternative for you what you need is an old piece of crap stereo system from the thrift store because guess what i picked this thing up for eight bucks eight dollars and it looks like it but this eight dollar rather unimpressive stereo system will replace a you know thirty to three hundred dollar phono preamp brilliantly and i'm going to show you how first of all let's look at this thing you guys want an equipment review we're going to include some equipment review let us look at this wonderful casio unit because i've got a few things to say about it too there is a marketing term called perceived value and basically what that means is you polish a turd you take something that's not as good as you're gonna try and pass it off to be and it was very very prevalent in terms of marketing tactics in the 90s you may be looking at this and saying huh i never knew cassio made stereo systems they don't and they shouldn't and they really didn't and if you got something that said casio that wasn't a keyboard and wasn't a calculator you need to be questioning yourself because this was the bottom of the barrel circa 1993 for many systems this is classified as a shelf mini system and you know i love this type of stereo we've you know talked about the iowas the sony's panasonic's those are fantastic but a casio one come on this is not this is this is what your grandma would buy you when you asked for you know the sony you would get the casio because yeah it kind of looks about the same size the dimensions you know are about right it has a cd player can't see it right now it's at the bottom it's got double tape deck it's got wow it's got a like a receiver looking thing it's got an eq it looks like a one two three four five six band eq it's got a digital tuner but this is all smoke and mirrors this is all not phony but let me show you what i mean let's start with taking a step back for a second one of the common perceived value techniques was to make stereos look like a component system so like you've got your separate stack the separate cd player separate tape deck separate amplifier receiver separate tuner looks like they're stacked like that but i'm sure you already know no my friends those aren't separates those are very much togethers looking at the side the fallacy starts to take shape this is one singular box with a very unsexy masonite back panel uh in a plastic bottom if you were to get something from like sony or panasonic of the same caliper this part down here would at least be metal and as you can see it's all plastic except for this this is probably where the the the power converter is the power transformer so yeah the this is again even in iowa will do the separates thing because it gives a styling aesthetic uh that was popular at the time but this is not this is not as good as it may first appear in 1993 was right when we were transitioning from all things analog to all things digital in terms of the mainstream we were getting cd players we were moving off of tapes and this unit kind of reflects that change again going to the marketing side you'll notice how am fm digital stereo tuner that is a huge huge thing they have to put the word digital anytime they could work the word digital you know onto a piece of equipment was an opportunity that they didn't miss because those were buzz words marketing terms that the mark that the public was looking for in that era they were looking for things digital so this may be a digital tuner meaning that it's got a little lcd digital display that's about the only thing that's digital this is actually probably an analog tuner and you know people ate that stuff up all right let me take you further down the rabbit hole of the fallacy that is this unit so remember how we talked about this uh six line graphic equalizer well what the heck why does this wait a minute that's not really a six band equalizer that's a three band and they even say it but they put two sliders per band to make you think that at a glance oh my gosh look at this got a pretty hefty eq you know this is only one step above a tone control a bass and a treble boost this is like a bass a trouble a boost and then a mid-range boost again this is all marketing this is just you get it home and you're like oh and this was so common in the early 90s and in the 80s to see equipment you know this is stuff you buy at kmart and stuff and it looked good in the box it looked good in the package and then you get it home and you're like oh well i guess it's only three band whatever and then anything they can possibly label anything they can possibly add a switch to like a balance switch why not this is another telltale sign of uh cheap equipment any time the remote sensor is labeled you know that you've got a cheap unit okay a very very cheap thing also this is gonna squeak a little bit the uh can the input select here these are just mechanical switches just like my pelican switch these are mechanical contacts there's nothing fancy there whatsoever mono and stereo switch was pretty common back in that era and then we got some tape decks so let's check that out we've got some more marketing jargon right here alc recording most people it's 99 have no idea what that is that's automatic level control or automatic gain control that's a bad thing that basically means that this thing is going to be throttling the volume coming in when you're making a recording so it can be raising it lowering it you know basically crushing the dynamic range and if you know you don't want to have to set your level then you may want that but it would be nice to have that as an option but it was cheaper than putting a record level on this so it has an alc recording feature and auto stop that's nothing fancy that's bottom of the barrel high speed dubbing i'm surprised it has that continuous play [Music] it's a basic unit and anytime you see a cassette deck with two decks that means it's designed for dubbing because that was huge in the 80s and 90s you borrow your friends tape that they paid for and you want to do a little music piracy you get a blank and their tape and you know bada boom bada bing you've each got a copy of new kids on the block let's look inside you can tell i haven't cleaned this thing out yet but one thing i do want to mention at this point in the program is that the cheapest of the cheap you know 30 years ago is probably on par with name brand quote unquote name brand electronics today looking at this with that curved spring armature right behind the head there i'm guessing this is an og tanishin mechanism which was the generic back in the day however an original authentic tanishin mechanism isn't too bad of a thing we can see we've got a permanent erase head right here the reason why it's at an angle is that it's not an electromagnet it's not switched on and off so it's literally hinges up and into position depending on if you have the record switch selected so in order to keep it from erasing your tapes in an unwanted way it swings down and out of the way when not in use i am happy to see however a stereo head and this again harkens back to the fact that the cheap of 1993 is better than the cheap of you know 2023 if that makes any sense so it's it's a very basic mechanism that being said but it should get the job done if you want to record tapes listen to tapes etc i'm not giving a full review to this unit today because we're really here for the phono switch and the phono capabilities of this unit the buying public no doubt would be attracted to this piece right here on the bottom actually surprised they put it on the bottom i would think that that would go at the top also another telltale sign of rather cheap electronics often times is when they put a format logo on like a compact disk digital audio very big and prominent you saw that a lot with like westinghouse and you know cheaper brands and things like that that being said this looks to be like a fairly full featured cd player it does have a tray mechanism it does look like it is programmable which is nice down here you've also got the mic input and your headphone amplifier we're going to be using the headphone amplifier as an output because the back of this unit does not have a dedicated line level output which we'll get to in a minute all of that to say this i couldn't just not you know give you at least a cursory walkthrough on this unit we'll do a full review maybe we'll do a side-by-side between this and a high-end unit from the era down the road but we're here for one thing only and that's the only reason why i bought this it's for these switches right here these are those mechanical inputs that we were talking about we've got tape we've got tuner we've got cd slash aux and we've got phono now this era 1993 was about the time when this started being phased out this switch this input is an artifact of an age gone by even by 1993 standards this is an artifact of phonographs and that's what fono means when i was a kid growing up and i saw phono on a stereo i used to think it was like a line level input where you could connect a vcr you know a dvd player an extra tape deck whatever but it is not in fact if you were to plug a line level source such as that into this or god forbid a headphone jack amplified into this you'll get distorted sound this is a phono switch which means it's doing two things that little button probably a very small circuit board in there takes the place of an entire phono preamp it takes a phono level input as you can see on the left and turns it into a line level output in the case of this stereo does it two ways you can send it out through the headphone jack as we're gonna do when we test it here in a minute or you can send it straight to the speakers so you can use this as essentially the amplifier for your vinyl setup depending on the quality of this unit that you get you can get you know great sound if it's a high wattage unit a casio unit probably not the highest end but this is you know demonstrative of the fact that you can get this for cheap i paid eight dollars at a thrift store today for this unit eight dollars for what will take the place of you know oftentimes it's 100 200 300 or more in a phono preamp or at a minimum 25 this is a cheap and easy way you can right now go out and get something that will function as a preamp if you're like me if you're impulsive as i very much am and let's say you got your first record player and you had that scenario play out that we described connect it up and oh it doesn't work i need a preamp and you don't want to wait for prime two days shipping you want it to work right now within five miles of wherever you're watching this from if you're in the united states probably there's exceptions i know if you're in a rural area you probably can get to a thrift store that probably has something like this that would work for probably less than 10 or 15 dollars so we're going to test it out and i'm going to prove to you that that works in that regard assuming this works i don't even plug this in yet i'm taking a bit of a gamble still got my receipt and all of that good stuff so let's go ahead and look at the back panel because that's going to be an important part of what we're doing by the way for those of you that are interested this is the casio ms4 cd this back panel features another artifact of the 70s and 80s and that is rca jacks for speakers that's something that you know doesn't exist you know a few years after this that kind of got phased out but speaker inputs instead of having like tabs or speaker wire connects you've got just regular rca jacks so you got to be very careful pay attention to what you're plugging into what here you if you plug that into a line input you're gonna blow a circuit in whatever device that is that is an amplified output it's similar to the amplified output on my realistic is it realistic my eight track player my component a-track player has that same thing that's why i use the headphone jack set to a certain volume in order to approximate line level we've also got the aux input right there and the phono input that phono input left and right correlates to that switch that is where we are going to connect our record player now here's where things get a little tricky if you are using the built-in preamp of a modern turntable all you need are the rca outs however if you're using an external preamp as we are today you also need the grounding cable because the ground is not included in what you're connecting there for the phono input however this does not have an obvious grounding post it's possible that one of the case screws could be a grounding post i'm not 100 sure so we're going to have to experiment a little bit sometimes as in the case with u-turn they actually put the ground into the left channel rca connector so we'll have to see about that i'm going to start by simply connecting the turntable without the grounding wire and what is going to happen is the 50 50 chance that i guess wrong right off the bat left and right what's going to happen if there is no ground properly connected that we're going to get a hum we're going to get a 60 cycle hum and then we'll we'll find a ground for that wire no damage will be done it'll just tear up in the audio which we won't want all right let's flip it around and test it out okay this is possibly the most hipster setup we've ever featured on this show we've got a sound bar for a speaker we've got a stereo system for a preamp and in this case also well kind of an amplifier it's going line input so this is truly the amp and an old record player all to do to show you that a 10 15 20 record player and a 10 15 20 stereo system can combine to give you a good sound system assuming you've got speakers or this maybe comes with speakers we've got a record playing over there we've got it connected to the to the back of this the phono input and then the output is the headphone jack we're going to set that to line level in here in a minute and that's going into the speaker if everything goes to plan this should work if we've got a hum then we've got to find a home for that grounding wire i haven't even i haven't even turned this on yet so here we go turning it on the very unexciting non-backlit display lights up let us turn the volume down so i don't blow out this speaker let's start with the i'm going to start with the tuner let's see if we can i hear something popping in the speaker so that's a good sound that's a good sign i want to get the level right okay so i got static see if we can get a signal i think the antenna is still connected okay so it is connected all right moment of truth you guys phono switch oh yes it's working okay okay okay now we need to turn up the volume on this nope that would be down let's turn it up oh we got a buzz hear that [Music] okay that's what i was saying you guys so we do have to find a home for that ground let us figure out what it's going to take to ground that properly so check this out they actually provide a little grounding wire that i didn't notice before so if we connect this it greatly minimizes although it doesn't completely eradicate that issue also if we connect to this antenna terminal it does the same thing but you should probably not do that so if you connect it then that should get you by that should deal with the grounding situation there's a little grounding wire connecting it or touching it to the screws didn't do anything it had to be an actual ground so we need to connect these some electrical tape will do the trick for now but let's give a system test let's listen to that record and see how how well this solution works [Music] listen to that that's after it's been grounded okay so this is not an ideal situation it works it'll get you by but what i'm talking about a new turntable from crosley or you know a modern company any you know new company that makes a decent turntable isn't necessarily a bad thing and maybe vintage is more of a pain in the butt than it's worth this is kind of what i'm talking about yes this works if i take that grounding wire off let me hear the difference i mean it's a night and day thing that's without the grounding wire connected whatsoever and with it connected it is you know doable but you're gonna want a better you're gonna want something better this will get you by for that first day or two but i bet you'll be you know upgrading soon so anyway there is one way to get around the preamp thing a lot of the poor quality has to do probably with cheap amplifiers in this casio if we were to do the same thing with a panasonic or a sony or a jvc we probably would have got much better results but at the end of the day it worked there is a way to make this stuff happen takes a little bit of creativity a little bit of ingenuity and patience and you know pretty soon you can have a junky looking stereo just like this one okay guys and that is going to do it i hope you enjoyed this show as much as i enjoyed putting it together for you which is considerable because i was excited about this one and i thank you so much for enduring to the end and watching really really appreciate it also thank you to everybody who voted in our poll today's show was decided upon by you if you keep an eye on those notifications if you have the bell notification selected you'll get notified every time we go live do giveaways or even put up a poll and in this case we put up a poll that asked you the viewer what did you want to watch today and you had four or five different choices you guys voted for an equipment review and that's what we did so i hope that this was of interest to you thank you for your active participation and for being there we've got another show coming up in just two days if you're a member of the vinyl nation if you're not a member click on the link down below to join otherwise we'll be back this weekend guys thank you so much happy record honey we will see you next time

Channel: Record-ology

Views: 17,571

Keywords: record players for beginners, record players to buy, record players 2021, record players under 100, record players with built in speakers, record players under 200, record players that won't ruin your records, record players explained, record players review, record players ajr, record players audio technica, record players and speakers, record players and records, record players acnh, record players and turntables, record players at big lots, record players all in one

Id: cnE3s9B-48E

Length: 25min 9sec (1509 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022