"laser"

sacrelcious

New Member
okay, I've been pondering something (and feel free to steal this idea, btw): a laser sighted turntable.

why? ever tried to play a record in the dark? you fumble around, and end up with you index finger on the side of the cartridge, snd the side of the platter, andif you slip this could get very upsetting. that's why! ever have friends over that don't know how to use a turntable? they bounce that needle on the halfway point of the first track, and screech the thing when they want to take it off and move it to another track. that's why!

the idea is to attach a laser sight (using a standard laser pen) near the needle. however, an obvious problem would arise from that sort of weight bearing down on the tonearm. one solution I came up with in my head would be to use fiber-optic cable, so that the laser could be placed somewhere on the outside or inside of the turntable body, attached to a fiber-optic cable, the other end of which can be placed on the head of the tonearm (this would also allow me to place it closer to the needle, and thus have better accuracy). the problem then is that fiber-optic cables are a little stiff, and would tend to hinder the movement of the tonearm (a problem that would also be shared by simple mounting the laser on the head of the tonearm, since there would need to be a cord for the power. unless I were able to tap into the wires leading to the cartridge).

now I'm no engineer, and I have had no [succsessful] experience with a soldering iron, so I would like to hear from those with a bit more knowledge in the matters. what solutions can you guys dream up? what problems can you forsee? can you dream up solutions to those new problems?
 
Laser light is very hard to see by. Your idea might be better if you were to mount a yellow LED in the headshell pointing down at the record. The weight of the LED is no issue and could be compensated for in the arm counterweight adjustment. DC power for the LED could be snaked up the arm with the signal leads to a small power supply or battery in the base of the turntable.

You could also use an external lamp to illuminate the entire turntable. That works very well! :)

Rob
 
but it's not really meant as light to see by. for a dark room you will be able to tell wether or not it's over the platter by the distance between the head and the dot. at least I would, and it is I that would be operating the turntable under those conditions. plus, if I'm putting a record on to got to sleep by, any led light that put out enough radiance to see by would also wake me up a bit.

for when friends are over it is assumed that some light is already available. the laser in this case is just for accuracy, as in laser sighted firearms.
 
My b&o TX-2 tangential tt has a focused lamp shining obliquely from the left side of the platter, across the record, to the stylus. This works really well for cueing when you're at or close to eye level with the stylus. A simple and elegant solution.

They used to sell little add-on lights like this for tt's at RadioShack and places like that.

As to the LED on the headshell idea... while its WEIGHT can be counterbalanced, it will still add to the moving MASS of the tonearm, which will affect its inertia, the resonant frequency of the tonearm/cartridge/stylus suspension system, etc. Not necessarily a disaster, but it will alter things.
 
I haven't researched this a whole lot, but... would an optical laser be able to 'read' the grooves of an LP? Assuming you could arrange some system to keep the tonearm tracking (since it wouldn't have any physical contact with the record)... it would turn an LP into almost like a CD?? Just idle musings tonight.
 
Here is your laser table http://www.elpj.com/

AS for a light, you have the right idea with fiber optics but not laser. You could put what ever light you want under or inside the plinth; white, yellow, blue...and the fiber optic would carry it to the end of the arm.
 
Cool idea(s) you've got here in this thread. Please let us/me know what you decide and how it turns out.

here's some other lighting ideas.

later>>>>>>>>
 
re: the LT... gads, my jaw dropped. Not only had someone already done it, but it's already come and gone. Sheesh, I take a little quarter century off, and boom the world's all changed.
 
Laser Turntable...

The idea is not that new, I read some time ago, that the laser turntable was "almost" ready for the public sale, in 1983, as the cd was beginning to hit the shelves. However, as the cd took hold, the LT just kind of faded into legend, as most felt that vinyl was history, and no one would pay for the final work needed for production. The proposed price was something similar to the new ones, in the $10k+ range, but it was speculated that prices would drop as production increased...

20 years later there here again, still over $10k.
 
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