Yeah, the third orphan type is definitely a big thing. I worked in HiFi retail in the late 80s, and customers often wanted a Kenwood/Technics/Pioneer midi-system *without* the included turntable. Mostly they were "proper" self-contained models though, with regular power/audio connectors. Often they'd have a 3.5mm "system" cable, which was optional/could be ignored. We didn't sell brands like Yorx. Lol. Even if we couldn't do a deal "sans turntable", the turntable would often end up in someone's attic, still new-in-box. I bet there are millions of such decks hiding in attics! Mostly nothing-special Aiwa-esque ones (long after Aiwa's heyday!).
Just to add a little more....the higher-end midi-systems tended to have much nicer linear-tracking turntables, far better build quality. These, even if people weren't really buying records anymore, tended to get set up with the rest of the system...so there won't be too many of those NIB in attics! Sadly! Just the super-basic black plastic belt-drive cheapies, most of which came out of the same factory.
If these turntables had standard audio and electrical power connections, what was the 'system' connection used for? Did it turn the turntable on and off when the appropriate function was selected?
@@stevesstuff1450 I see. So if that system cable isn't use, does that mean the turntable is always powered on when connected to AC power? Did such turntables also have a power switch?
@@Lachlant1984 "system" was for remote control operation, or synchro-start of recordings, or auto-source select on the amp, that sort of thing. Not really seen on the budget models so much... something you'd find on linear tracking decks etc.
Mr Westlife (represent), your videos have been incredibly useful for someone with a current "cheap" vintage turntable addiction. It's really nice to see someone break away from audiophile bs and use common sense and factuality. Your videos have given me a good sample size of good and bad turntables and what to look out for so now I have no trouble finding obscure tables without any documentation and knowing whether they're going to be good and how to fix them. If you ever do come across a Sanyo, Fisher, or JVC turntable with a "normal" pivoting tonearm but track select, do not pass up on them. They use a cartridge which has an IR emitter and sensor to see the tracks and work much faster than linear turntables. Most also have a remote control option. They're super hard to come by and will definitely have some minor issues, but if you get them working it's something to keep for life.
I have to admit I have a liking for the cheaper stereos from the 80’s too. Not for the sound but nostalgia. Some of them can actually sound quite good. Think our equivalent to the American Sounddesign and yorx is maybe Amstrad or Bush of which I’ve a few. The cassette decks even on them is still ac bias recording. I’ve one with a slide out turntable and the amstrad is a one piece in a rack looking like separates. I have an old amstrad receiver too which sounds really nice.
@@TheErador the weakest point of the whole rack system units were the speakers! If you swap them out for something better they sound quite good. AC bias cassette decks, metal tape compatible, decent tuner. The bsr auto return decks work great once you clean out the old grease and replace it. Last one I did was completely seized!
I was just thinking how rad it would be if you were an AM or FM radio DJ and you only used the devices you repair to air your daily playlists. I would have your station as a preset, my friend. Always love the history, mods, repairs and the music selection! Hope your holiday is most excellent.
Given that Aiwa's design, if I were going to the trouble to convert one I would've just desoldered the original wire from the circuit board, completely replaced it with new wiring for a separate wall wart and RCA jacks, and taped up / stowed the original wiring somewhere in the body of the table. That way the mod is a bit cleaner and less destructive if I ever had to revert it back to its original state. One could even do something with pin headers on the board if they were up to it, but let's not get crazy.
I did this with a pioneer turntable, very similar to an lp60 like the aiwa. It was my main turntable for many years. Still used in a secondary system and sounds great
Good research job on those old, cheap turntables. A few points here: 1. I never really got a good look at the underside of the Yorx platter, but I was thinking that since you essentially "armed" the shutoff mechanism, there may be a "boss" molded into the platter that trips the shutoff when the tonearm gets to the runout. 2. I'm also a big proponent of making reversible modifications. I would have gone so far as to remove the original power cable on the Yorx, cut the plug off of the adapter (DC adapters are easy to find) and soldered the cable directly to the original attachment points. Likewise, I would have removed the ribbon cable from the Aiwa and installed suitable cables. But then again, that's just me. 3. The intro to "The Colonel Bogey March" at 20:51 bears a striking resemblance to the intro of Steely Dan's "Do It Again."
#1 if you watched closely you would see that the tone arm activated the switch as well as shut off the switch. But the thing about that set up it puts side pressure on the tone arm that puts pressure on the outer edge of the record. For me to not ruin my records, I would have bypassed the switch with a external one and not used the clicking mechanism since it ride the outside of the record groove..
Speaking of "orphan turntables", several years ago, I bought an "orphan cassette deck" made by Scott that had a ribbon cable to connect to its matching amplifier. Luckily, I bought the Scott amp (with remote included) for only $11.99, its matching tuner for $10, and the next day, the aforementioned cassette deck for only $5 on a half-price electronics sale day at my local Salvation Army Thrift Store. They all worked well and I added a Nikko CD player (only $5) to the set. I had assumed that the Scott amp and tuner would likely be picked up by someone else, so I jumped on them on the non-sale day, but I figured the "orphan cassette deck" would be useless to anyone else since it did not have typical RCA cables to connect to any amplifier, so I took a chance on the half-price sale day, got there early, and scooped up the cassette deck. :)
Thank you for your nice guide on how to make use of "orphaned" turntables. From center positive to center negative, tracing the L, R & g wires and finding out if it is ceramic, MM or if it comes with its own phono preamp. These things are very helpful indeed. A warm handshake from my humble country the Philippines 🇵🇭.
I have to stop watching your vids, now inexplicably buying this sort of stuff and spending endless hours getting the fiddly things working. Well it beats some more expensive methods of wasting time.
I remember that old thing pulling the tone arm to the right. One of our old players we had to do that (cheap one) JC Penny's didn't but it needs some repair as it has the turntable cassette and 8-track player. Used to play the latter quite good. Dads much older Unisonic never really played 8-tracks well. So eventually I bought my own that I could use to record to cd's. But I had it open to make sure nothing was spewed out inside. Because of this channel I one of the $90 now $200 record players by AT
I had that Yorx stereo, that starts around 8:32. Got it for my birthday in 1987. It also came w/ a rack and the most ridiculous speakers. The latter were about three feet tall, but each had one 8", full-range driver, down near the bottom. I later found some better speakers at a yard sale.
Back in 1988 I was the proud recipient of an Aiwa hi-fi system for Christmas, and it included the very turntable in this video! It was a CX-770, and included a 5-band GEQ (with spectrum analyser - so cool back in the 80s!), a digital tuner and twin tape decks with auto reverse on the recording deck. I had it for 10 years before embarking on a journey into sepearates that continues to this day. Thanks for bringing back some great musical memories!
Aaah yea, those all-in-ones masquerading as component systems lol. It's cool that you got the Yorx going without modifying a single thing, and the Aiwa would make a decent, inexpensive turntable if you soldered on a regular RCA cable and power cord.
I have to disagree that these cheap decks are the result of the vinyl slowdown of the late 1980s. They are just cheap electronics. It's not like you couldn't get excellent turntables in 1985 or 1987. Some of the best sounding turntables ever made were made in this period. Every other component of these cheap plastic bookshelf machines, which were little more than non-portable boomboxes are every bit as bad and bare-minimum as the turntable. The whole stereo is bad. Even the ones with CD players sound bad. They have cheap plastic speakers. 1 or 2 watt output which sound tinny and weak. They are just all around 1980s plastic badness, especially YORX. Yorx was so bad even Kmart didn't sell that name in the 80s. Dollars to donuts these machines sold for 100-200 Dollars at the most. I bought one in 1987 for 99 Dollars at Toys R Us.
I was talking to my 17 year old nephew the other day, he only buys music on CDs... For the same reason some people in my generation would buy the LPs. I wonder if my grandfather's friends would only buy the Edison cylinders!
In your and your grandfather’s generation, recorded music on physical media was the only thing available. Streaming music can be equal to or better than cd 💿 just go into the settings and turn the quality up. For me if a song drops off streaming media , that’s ok , I’ve probably listened to it too many times anyway
@@jjcoolaus Better than CD means going beyond the human range of hearing. Audiophiles who claim to be able to go beyond CD quality should not be listened to.
I work with a lot of gen Z folks at my job and they're into collecting music on any format they can get, but several of them specifically want to get more into CDs. It makes a lot of sense, and I encourage it! Although it's a bummer that some old CD prices are slowly creeping up there
@@CKT1138 I love CDs, I have hundreds of them - probably 500 - but vintage CD players are tragically flakey. But they are very cheap, so you don't really have to worry. Any given DVD player will play CDs anyways, though it likely won't sound as good as a *cd player*.
@@Bob-1802 Haha... I really don't care either way. I would just like for one connector to stick around for a while. Every time I build up a collection of cables and chargers, it changes, and I have to start over again. So whether it's Lightning, or USB-C, the 30-pin dock connector, or the old Motorola 3-pin thing.. just pick one and leave it alone! X-P
What about the option Phonograph? It's sometimes used to avoid the word gramophone, what is a trademark. Interestingly, East Europe didn't care about this, a phonograph was always called gramophone and a tape recorder magnetophon, what is a trademark by Telefunken.
Phonograph was Thomas Edison's name for his cylinder player. When Emil Berliner invented the flat disc record player, he called it the gramophone. Even after flat discs replaced cylinders, many people in the U.S. still referred to a record player as a phonograph, while gramophone remained the more common term in Europe.
There's nothing era-inappropriate about cheap 80s equipment paired with cheap 70s equipment. That would've been suuuuuper common to see WELL in to the 2000s even.
Right - barrel plug polarity is important - LOL - and they used Male barrel as a power input instead of an output. I recall a great deal of Casio music keyboards being center-negative. - oh wait - you just said that too. :)
Plenty of Sinclair ZX Spectrum (and presumably Timex Sinclair 2068) computers have been killed or badly injured over the years by people using power supplies with centre positive barrel jacks... oof.
I haven't owned a turntable or any vinyl records since 1993. I would never voluntarily descend into the fragile, inconvenient hell of LP playback again. Yet, your video is almost a half-hour long and I watched all of it. Success?
In the late 70s we had a Philips turntable with built-in amplifier and external speakers (plastic square cabinets with coarse plastic built-in grille), which you needed to pull back the arm to turn it on just like this one. It had a very distinct sound as the built in amplifier switched on, like two low buzzes in sequence. I can still hear that in my head very vividly 😁. Also, when I tried to record it to my portable cassette boom box via a DIN cable the sound was very tinny. Now I know why. Good times. Not very high quality sound times for me, but good times nevertheless 👍👍
To be fair they didn’t sound bad at all, but I would probably just buy a turntable with a plug and rca cables. Still a very interesting video. Thank you
Even though I'm not particularly into vinyl (..yet) this video is awesome because I actually have an orphaned set of speakers that came with an old Gateway monitor I used to have. Monitor died but the speakers sounded pretty good for what they were so I salvaged the speaker bar, which has one of those male barrel connectors on it that's meant to plug into the monitor itself. Been wanting to figure out how to get it running again and this video reminded me I should probably get on that. Also didn't know polarity reverse adapters were a thing, either. Good to know.
Hello Sir, very interesting video. Here in the UK in 1994 I bought an Aiwa midi system z1500 and with it a fully automatic turntable px-e850. I believe you have one. System had a double cassette,3 CD changer and 4 band radio. It also had different sound categories like pop,rock,hall,live etc. It cost £399 including 3 way speakers as well. The next year was my dad's 60th birthday and we all got together to buy him a new music system. We looked at different brands for around the same price eg Sony, pioneer, Kenwood. Couldn't beat the Aiwa and bought the same as mine. I still have the turntable,I sold it recently as it worked perfectly. I'd bought a replacement cartridge years ago for £11.99,an Audio Technica clone. As it had a built in pre amp I used it with a Sony NX1 system. Some people are asking silly money for it,one £95!!!.
Some people suddenly realised that there is no amp or even no RIAA corrector after buying such thing. I saw such examples in Russia. And after they start calling somebody to do something)
Always wondered what those mini tape decks that were part of a silver coloured stack system usually with a CD, amp, tuner and possibly an EQ sounded like. Denon released some, as did Onkyo. You sometimes see the separate parts on eBay.
The small realistic sa155 amps like the ones you’ve reviewed in the past equalise a ceramic cartridge perfectly too. They can actually sound quite good even with only under 2 watts a channel.
Those little SA150 and 155 amps are indispensable and very versatile. I insist on having at least one around at all times. Give 'em some reasonably efficient speakers and they sound fantastic despite the limited power.
@@xaenon I’m the same I have two lying around. The older one with the silver facia I also have the matching tuner and cassette deck. It’s a great wee system and I’ve not even had to change the belts on the cassette deck.
I bought a orphan turntable at a thrift store once. It was a Panasonic SF-630. I only paid $10 for it. I was hoping I could modify it somehow to make it work with a normal amplifier, but I eventually decided it wasn't worth the trouble. It wasn't a particularly fancy turntable, but it was unique looking.
Superb video. God I was so glad I was there in the 80s (I'm 54 now). Yourself & Matt make brilliant videos that take me back, and i can watch vicariously and enjoy. I thank you.
That Aiwa turntable matches my Aiwa system, Wich I am desperately trying to find a player and tapedeck for that uses the umbilical so I have the controls Edit: Aiwa did sell a standalone version, I own it, it's the PX 800 instead of the PX 770 Wich you have
Same as with the polarity of DC jacks, I wouldn't always assume that red wire is positive and black/blue is negative, I think more reliable way to find polarity is to look for ground, on electrolytic caps which have ground marked or housing of the DC motor, for example.
Yeah, I got burned with that when I was younger, I guaranteed myself barrel jacks were center positive. Even on modern electronics it's not always true.
Certainly, ignore coloured cabling, the Chinese built products ( which let's be honest is almost all ) don't follow any particular protocol ! I've seen black, white , green , red you name it connected to positive. When debugging/troubleshooting switch your eyesight to monochrome!
That ultra-80s-arrangement with the 5 1/4" floppy-drive and that cheap 14" Monitor in the back; and the black plastic stereo system in the front really made my day! It gave me a nice warm reminder of my childhood. Thanks a lot! I really enjoyed that view. I recently searched for an old book in my parent's attic and ran across my cheap plastic "Schneider" system I had when I was 12 years old. I had to take it home with me. Twelve band graphic EQ, ridiculous claim of "500W PMPO", the "Metal" sign on the tape deck door and all the other goodies are there. It deserves a nice place in my man cave.
26:36 if you would have opened the player first, _before_ cutting the original connector, you could just put that cable inside and connect new wires/cables for power in and audio out...
Ha ha. I grew up with that Command Stereo Checkout record. My dad bought it before I was born, (I'm in my 50's now), I still use it to check frequency responses of stereos, speakers and the rumble, wow and flutter of turntables. My favorite track is the last one on side 2, Enjoy Yourself Cha Cha. :) LOL I typed all that BEFORE you played track 4.
I have a couple of stereo demonstration albums including Audio Fidelity’s “Stereo Demonstration and Sound Effects” album, Bel Canto’s Stereo Demonstration album with multicolored vinyl which was really cool, the Decca stereo demonstration record, RCA Victor’s “Sounds in Space” stereo demonstration record and the Project 3’s “Stereo Test Record” which was in conjunction with Popular Science Monthly magazine. I’ve never came across this Command Stereo Check Out record, but I would really love to hear the entire album. I also have the “Fantasia” soundtrack which were 3 LP’s with a gatefold booklet, and it was a stereo release on the Buena Vista label which was originally on Disneyland, and it was soundtrack to the Disney animated musical of “Fantasia” released in 1940, but it was a 1957 release since stereo was about to come in.
Aww, two male barrel connectors finding happiness together with the help of a friend! Does that make "12V 5.5mm x 2.1mm DC...able Wire Ends Plug Barrel" an ally?
You can test with multimeter if it's a center positive or center negative, set the multimeter to continuity test and touch one of the probes to the center pin and the other probe to a grounded place if it beeps it's center negative, if it doesn't beep it's center positive. To find out the voltage just give it three volts and increase the voltage slowly until it starts to play at correct speed.
Out of the two Turntables, the Yorx sounded more spacious but a little shrill. Not sure if the was the initial system used? The AIWA sounded warmer, less top heavy. When you cut the cable of the AIWA then went and looked inside; would it not have been better to de-solder the cable? Or would that have been to messy?
Hey vwestlife when wiring thr phono plugs and the turntable has common ground do you have to connect the common ground to both the left and right phono plugs or is just to one channel sufficient?. Great video
When i find these, I stockpile them and do research about the stereo models that correspond to the model of the turntable. Then, i have a list of those stereo model numbers when i go hunting. I match them up and pass them along as sets. Most people would rather have something like this that they know where to get it worked on and upgraded (me) than spending a ton of money on a modern one.
i had the same aiwa turntable, i actually added the missing transformer and cables, it was nice, i paid nothing for it so for the price it was fine for the time.
Ah Yorx. I remember those things when new. Came with included speaker cabinet rattle out of the box. I have a AT 120 something-or-other. I haven't done a video about it because I'm not done filming it. The whole thing is a disaster. I should have never bought the thing.
Brilliant entertaining video there as ever VWestlife! I planned to skip through given the length but watched it all. I am just trying to work out which is the silliest thing - the lack of standard on centre positive/centre negative power plugs or those graphic equaliser controls with two slider knobs per control to make it look like there are more bands than there really are!!
So I spent my years looking for a Panasonic 8 track player with the RCA jacks Now let me explain why the Panasonic 8 track player near the end of its life Actually has a fiber glass belt so the belt doesn't turn gooey and it doesn't break down it continues to run and run and run as long as you can find tapes and what's quite shocking is that I've had this sting now for 25 years And it still hasn't skipped a beat I could really see why people love this model of player it's the same reason why sometimes taking on a orphan turntable can really be a nightmare because some of these turntables had really really proprietory needles And even worse were only made by the manufacturer so you definitely gotta be careful
Funny, I think they both were worth saving. Though I would have gone "non destructive" by unsoldering connections inside and adding in new cables. In the case of the AWAI both power and audio jacks, and for the Yorx just the power with a short length and the barrel input. The original cables could have been set aside, but honestly, nobody is going to reunite these with their "components." The turntables are perfectly adequate for 99% of applications. Even featuring auto stop that many new models don't have.
Slightly off topic, but I was born in 1984, so I'm only just old enough to remember the decline of the vinyl record. We had a record player when I was very young, but we stopped using it when I was about 7, I think the cartridge or stylus failed and Dad never replaced it, I believe this happened in very early 1991 when I was 7. I have a younger brother who was born when I was 15. When he was very young my step father lamented the fact his son wouldn't grow up knowing what a record is. 23 years later, my younger brother loves records, he has a record player and a collection of records, so now, I can spoil him by going to one of my favourite shops and I can buy him vinyl LPs to play, it's just so interesting that a music format that was abandoned over 30 years ago has regained popularity again and that you can buy such a large library of music on vinyl record. Makes me wonder if the CD will regain popularity in the future. The CD is my favourite music distribution media.
Great tutorial on how to give an otherwise useless item new life. Very neat to see the origins of the AT-LP60. I assumed it was a new/modern design. I actually have an orphan Technics AM/FM tuner that I found at a thrift store a couple of years ago. I went a bit further and drilled holes to put jacks for the line output and power. It takes a strange power input - 9V AC.
I don't suppose it's the ST-Z990 by any chance? It had a ribbon cable connector carrying power, audio and even remote control signals. At the time I was so desperate to find a standalone component tuner that I decided to spin the wheel and bought it, even though I had to take the matching cassette deck with it. (The latter got tossed after kicking around for a while.) I did get it to power up (also 9 VAC) and even haphazardly wired it up to hear it play. That was as far as it went, because an analog Kenwood standalone tuner came along. I'm not sure if the Technics tuner is still around or not...
That Yorx reminds me of the hours I spend as a child reading the "Consumers Distributing" catalog, here in Canada. I like the colorful stickers on it, and the compact size.
13:00 To start the player by moving the tonearm to the right was the standard way in many manual record players. I had two players working this way, I saw some record players from the 1930's working exact this way and also some record players, where you have to move the tonearm left, especially with a tonearm lift. Very interesting was Mr. Hit and its East European clones, a better one has a slider, push it to the front to move the tonearm to the position, release it to move the tonearm to the record, push it to the back to lift the tonearm and move it to the rest position.
The Philips UFO from the late 1960s uses the same method. Best to leave any labels on as otherwise even people familiar with turntables won't work it out.
Don't buy anything that uses ceramic cartridges unless you plan to upgrade it to a better cartridge. Even those Victrola suitcase players can be upgraded to a crappy diamond needle for about ten bucks which makes them sound less crappy.
I've seen many of these orphan turntables for sale, usually at heavily discounted prices, and always passed them up for fear of the unknown. Nice to see how easy it is to retrofit them to use with a new foster stereo system. That AIWA sounded on par with my Audio Technica AT-LP60 (as it should, since it shares the same cartridge). As an aside, those Command and Time Records used to be a dime a dozen; now they're almost impossible to find for reasonable prices. I snagged a few many years ago for less than a buck a piece. They make the perfect test material for turntables old and new, or even just for marveling at the over-the-top stereo effects employed when stereo was new. Perhaps that album can make an eventual appearance on your music channel?
I need to find a better copy of "Stereo Check-Out". It sounds like someone played my copy over and over again with a worn needle, because it has high surface noise and a loss of high frequencies, while my other Command records sound quiet and bright.
@@vwestlife I was wondering about that. While it sounded good on video, it didn't sound quite as clear as I remember most of the Command records sounding, namely, as you pointed out, with regard to the high frequencies. Still a great record to listen, even if a little tired.
Whenever I see a video about vinyl playing gear on one of the channels I follow, I think "hey, wouldn't it be cool to own one of those things again?" But then I remember that I don't own any records anymore..
Many times I go in a Charity shop I think "that's a cool looking record" and end up buying it despite not having a deck set up ................... yet. Latest purchase Impact - The Breakthrough to the Exciting World of Stereo Sound" (which it probably was in 1968).
9:09 - I knew I had seen that Yorx New Wave before - my brother had an identical Schneider New Wave in the eighties but it was red. It also had a mechanized drawer like a CD player but it was where you put the remote control! The three band eq was just a single slider for tone.
I say the technics ramge form the 8ps had the best compact design with the liniar tracking I have the sl6. Merry Chrostmas & a happy new year look forward to see what you have for 2023
i used to have a silver hitachi 'music centre' that had lost its 'custom' record deck and cassette deck, and if i had them, and the rest was in better state(it was used in a factory for many years before i was told i could have it as they were clearing out, and was very mucky) i'd have kept it , also got a twin tape cassette unit that has a strange multiway connector for audio in/out, cant remember brand at the mo
Funny and great subject! I bought a full-automatic Technics SL-JS16R (with T4P cardridge) a few months ago for only $10 with the same idea, trying it to use it. Much cheaper than other turntables of this brand only because of the plug. Before I bought it, I searched for the service manual of the system and turntable online to figure out the pinout of the 12-pin connector. With success, made a breakout board for the connector (preserve the connector similar reasons you mentioned) and yes, now I can use it. To a surprise there was a preamp section inside this model, the AN7310N so I was able to use it on a line-level input. Works great. Test the speed and such and is spot on after all those years. Worth to do this? Yeah, for sure! Great turntable for what it is and an alu platter. Creativity and to learn something is always a good thing. Please don't translate any action you take into money, don't be afraid to try it. It is a very satisfying process. Tip for power jacks like you showed us, you can buy male and female jacks with wire screw terminals at the end. With these you can make your own power adapter cables and you can also swap the polarity if you want. Very useful, no need to solder (you need some wire and a screwdriver) and you can make any combination you need. Great video and subject, as always.
13:13 The auto shut-off method described here is *NOT* new. Colaro in Britain made a single-playing phono deck in the 1950s and into the early 1960s that employed the same method, pull the arm back until you hear a "click" which starts the platter rotating, and when the stylus reaches the centre run-out groove, the mechanism triggers the shut-off which cuts power to the motor, and possibly also retracts the idler wheel from the capstan. Several other 1960s-vintage single-play decks used the same method.
I have a Sony AM & FM tuner & Sony tape deck that have a similar ribbon cable. Fortunately, I also have the Sony amplifier that the radio tuner & tape deck plug into.
Comment #2 - have you ever had a turntable with a failing belt that sounded like there was a sink drain coming through the audio? I had that happen with a Pioneer turntable, and looking it up online it seems to be a real thing. It's very odd though!
Fantastic rescue. I love what Yorx did in the late 80s, I imported a couple of their triple cassette deck boomboxes for my collection a while back. I hope you find the system to go with that turntable. Interesting how they used the "Q" in the model name too, like Sony''s PS-Q turntables you mentioned that were designed for their FH boombox series. I just think Japanese manufacturers were fascinated with "Q" as a great shortening for 'Cute", even Sharp did a QT model name for their smaller mini boomboxes. Much like how they used "W" as an indicator for anything with two, like a double (w) cassette deck.
Recently saw a drawer style Yorx which uses a barrel plug. Also had a Soundesign that was the same deal but converted it to a standalone. I personally like the CZ-680 because it’s basically a Varco TN4B and styli for the TN4B will fit on the CZ-680
I noticed some distortion when using the CZ-680 with the Soundesign, probably because it was intended to be used with the lower-output CZ-800 cartridge. The CZ-680 has high output and quite loud "needle talk".
If the turntable has a built in preamp, the audio ground is probably tied to power ground, making it easy to work out the power plug polarity without taking it all to bits.
I had an aiwa equipment with the same turntable, I was surprised by the sound quality, after having a poor quality Crossley type (despite being Toshiba), today I enjoy a Sony and an ATLP-60, both very good.
Ha! I actually had a Yorx record player stereo system back in 1984 or 1985 with an attached (not separate) record player (either a Q100 model or Q200), two cassette decks, AM/FM tuner, and two "tower" speakers for around $200 back then. I enjoyed it for many years as an entry level system as a teenager and ironically, even though I eventually chucked it because the belt had dried out, the cassette decks were chewing tapes or not functioning at all, etc, I still kept the dust cover and the 45 rpm adaptor for some silly reason. :)
Today's AudioTechnica turntables are engineered and manufactured by Hanpin Electron, Taiwan, with manufacturing being done at their mainland China facility, they make the majority of affordable HiFi turntables and all DJ turntables except Technics. Did this company already exist back then and did it make that AIWA, or did it inherit the tech from another Taiwanese company? I wonder. Currently the website no longer lists several of the models they make, but 10 years ago it did, with AT-LP60 being a match to Hanpin FU-700 and AT-LP1240 being Hanpin DJ-5500 with minor electrical changes.
@SianaGearz Audio Technica never made turntables as far as I can remember back in the 1980s and prior, only turntable accessories mostly magnetic cartridges, studio quality microphones, and headphones. I'm pretty sure that AT licensed their name to Hanpin in the past decade or two.
@@watershed44 AT is a miniature precision magnetics manufacturer - headphone speaker drivers, microphone capsules, and phono cartridges. I imagine they decided to establish themselves as a turntable brand to support their phono cartridge business after all reputable Japanese turntable brands dried up and formed a market void. And of course they based it on manufacturing and part kit that was already established by someone else. So I imagine the product management, marketing and distribution of turntables is in Audio Technica hand, they can use the same distribution channels they use for their headphone and microphone products (Ingram), with engineering and manufacturing being handled by Hanpin.
I had a Sony TA-AX 295 stereo system, the turntable was pure crap. The cartridge was difficult to replace the needle, I needed to use coins to press needle into groove because it made records sounded off without the coins. It also had a simular cooky power wire which the entire system had for hooking up the tuner and cassette deck.
You don't want the rest of the Yorx system... That is unless you don't give a toss about any sort of build and sound quality. I owned one of these all in one systems as a teenager and it sounded absolutely horrible and was made of the cheapest plastic and masonite (cardboard, really) that could apparently be sourced at that time. The tape transports were terrible. The only thing it could really practically serve as is a demonstration of what cheap electronics were like in the 1980's.
For the aiwa, I would have just resoldered the whole cable so you can preserve it, or even just tuck it inside. Solder the replacement wires right to the joints. I've encountered that Aiwa before and done exactly that and resold it on eBay.
