ok all you vinyl people. i just got this sweet zenith combo 8-track/record/player/cassette reciever at a garage sale. it has this plastic piece that swivels like the needle arm (just like in the picture above), but after an hour of playing with it, i still can't for the life of me figure out what its for. could someone a little more analog savvy clue me in? thanks

If yr talking about the skinny arm that is, in the picture, adjacent to the center spindle, here's yr answer: you have what used to be called a "record changer"- you take a stack of records and put them on the center spindle where they are held by the lttle supports on the spindle, then you lower the skinny arm onto the top of the stack of records- that arm keeps the stack horizontal. Then you start the machine and it will drop one record, play it, then when it's finished, the tonearm will automatically return to its rest position, the next record will drop and play, etc.....

sweet, thanks! my first stack is going strong

The notion of stacking yer reckids was quite obviously frowned upon by '70s audiophiles.

still is frowned upon..if you have a TT with it

ask yourself, but what about the records?

You know Bobby Collins!? Woah, small world.

this would be much better if it worked on 45s.

Changers were pretty useful for party situations when you were just too <cough cough> busy to flip records over every few minutes, but all the records I still have that were bought new from that era NEVER were stacked and most of them still sound pretty good.

It does.

-edit- or at least, it should, methinks.

Yup. It should've come with a ten pound canister that fits over the spindle (the diameter of the large hole for U.S. 7" rekkids) that has two clips activated by the mechanism in the spindle.

Dunno about this particular box, but on some the 45 adaptors looked a lot like that rectangular gizmo that's lying on the platter in the pic. Hard for me to magnify it enough to tell- druucifer, what the hell is that thing?

Yeah, that's it. Our family's get-up was a solid state hi-fi (pre-stereo) Zenith unit from the early sixties. It had the ten pound canister, and doubled as a space heater with all the tubes. I really miss that unit.

Where's the 'shuffle' button?

fp

I wouldn't do it myself, stack records, that is. But I remember being told that the grooves of the stacked records never actually touch, the outside edge and the label are the only parts that actually make contact.

i have some double LPs that seem to be made for stack players. sides A and D are on the same disc while B and C share a disc too. i can't imagine why else that'd be, other than for stacking purposes.

I'm only willing to stack 78s. Thise are just too short and I'm too lazy to change records after each song.

Man, I seriously hope you're not playing any records you care about on that thing. lol.

Unless you mean using the record stack arm, this is just silly talk.. as long as you have a new stylus (and preferbly cartridge) , and your tone arm is balanced correctly, stylus tracking force is right, etc, its fine.

I feel old when parts of a turntable have to be explained. I guess it's understandable given the complete dominance CDs gained over the past 15 years.

Still, I remember loading up reel-to-reels and 8-tracks when I was little.

-frosting "Play it on that K-set player, Dan-O" spoon

I'm encouraged that there are folks who want to know- I never abandoned vinyl and never will.