Telling the tale from my radio days about the transmitter fuse made me nostalgic and got me searching for information about the turntables I loved using. Especially for slip-cueing* singles!
The two tables we had in the DJ studio at the station were 3-speed Russco Cue-Masters. They were manufactured in California and available as late as 1981 — with 78 rpm! — only a couple of years before Compact Disc appeared in the U.S.
As you can see, no assumption was made regarding the choice of tonearm. I was working just west of Simpsons City, aka Springfield. Micro-Trak, a company located just north of Springfield, manufactured tonearms. The legendary model 303 had a wooden wand. Yes, wood!
Micro-Trak sourced its turntables from Russco, and offered them as complete packages with their tonearms factory installed. We had the 720 model — a Russco Cue-Master “Drilled for Micro-Trak Model 303.”
The Stanton 500 was a broadcast standard phono cartridge. The 500-E with elliptical stylus was well-suited for stereo records played on FM stations. The 500-E was one of the first cartridges I ever owned, while in high school. At the AM station, the 500-AL with conical stylus was installed in the 303 tonearms, and wired for mono use.**
This setup was an absolute sure-footed — or armed — delight to use! I have indelible memories of exactly how it felt and sounded handling those turntables and cueing up records. The clutch for changing speeds took some effort to move! That little notch seen in the picture above between the 33 and 45 speeds was where you could park the lever to disengage the drive so the platter would spin freely for swapping records.*** For all the love club DJ’s have for the direct-drive Technics SL-1200, they would be amazed by the tank-like build quality and mechanical strength of those old, idler/rim-drive professional turntables.
The radio biz is nothing like it was, of course. I am very glad that I was able to experience radio broadcasting as it was, when I did. Especially considering the opportunity came from an unsolicited offer that was dropped in my lap.
*Slip-cueing is done with the platter spinning. The felt mat glued to the platter slides underneath the record. After back-cueing to find the desired spot, the record is held in place by the DJ until released.
**By the time I was working in radio, promotional singles for broadcast use were no longer mixed in mono by the record labels. They were simply “folded down” mono. The DJ copies were stereo for FM on one side, with mono for AM on the flip side. After the mono side suffered “cue burn” at the start of a single, we flipped over to the stereo side. Since the Stanton 500 cartridges were wired for mono, they produced the same “folded mono” sound.
***Major market stations in the Top 40 era, notably Musicradio 77 WABC, didn’t use turntables on-air. As you would expect, the record labels provided multiple free copies of everything. When a new song selection for airplay was made, a fresh copy was recorded to tape cartridge. In fact, there were engineers who managed the mixing board and did all of the cart swapping, so the DJ’s were actually more like announcers.
The station’s records had so much cue burn, some extra wear didn’t matter! I always wanted a Stanton 680 Mk II, but never had one. I’ve used an Ortofon Super OM 20 for many years.
The 500 MM design has so much frequency intermodulation distortion that it only sounds good wired in mono anyway to cancel out the out-of-phase distortion. Still you’re destroying the high frequencies in the grooves either way. Groove killer. The 680 MI line was much better, even if less flat a response.
Likewise, when drawing I prefer pencil and paper to digital tablet.
True enough. A good part of it is nostalgia. Part of it is the tactile experience of holding an album, and the “large” scale canvas for the artwork. Our phone screens even make CD’s look big.
Any working CD or DVD player at a thrift store has superior fidelity to any turntable setup. And yet…
Good stuff — I enjoyed reading. I feel like such a turntable novice.