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Garrard AT6 needle?

C

carguytroy

New Member
hello all. Total newbie here. I have a few old audio components that need fixing up one being my grandmothers Packard Bell Console stereo with a Garrard AT6 turntable. She purchased it new in the late 50’s or early 60’s roughly. Played fine forever but has developed a pretty good buzzing noise and the original needle needs o be replaced. What replacement needle/cartridge should I be looking for? I searched on here and see a lot of different older threads with a lot of different suggestions. The stereo is in great condition overall and I would like to keep using it.
 
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A vintage Shure M7D cartridge will sound nice with that Garrard. Hard to find them cheap these days, however.
 
I’d suggest you just get a new needle and spend a lot less money than swapping the cart. To do that you have to identify the cart in the headshell. It has a collar that loosens, you pull out the headshell. May have to loosen the two screws to drop it and see. Good luck.
 
Well, seeing that I’d drop a few on a new cart. But not a whole lot. An AT basic cart will do fine in there.
 
Apparently the needle can be flipped over. Spun it over and I now have sound! And some pretty good buzzing. Still the needle or should I start looking at other things for the buzzing noise? I’m sure the whole thing is way dirty inside. Also the turn table turns a bit slow for a new John Mayer record that my son just got. Is there any adjustment on these or what you have is what ya get? Like a pitch screw maybe? I put on an old Herb Alpert record and it seem right but the new record plays too slow.
 
Usually flip over styli have a LP rock on one side and a 78 rock on the other, so you want to make sure it's set right for what you're playing. LP is generally something like a 0.7mm conical while the 78 will be in the neighborhood of 3mm.

Also, if you have a ceramic cart on there now, you need to determine if the preamp in your console has a phono stage in it or if you need to stick with a ceramic cartridge. Basically there are three different types of cartridge - ceramic, which outputs a line level signal more or less; moving magnet, which is most of the modern carts on the market today, which requires a RIAA phono preamp; finally, moving coil which is a much lower output than MM and requires either a special phono stage or a step-up transformer to use with a normal RIAA phono stage. Now before dismissing ceramic as obsolete and unworthy of use, unless your system is super high end, it is in fact possible to get pretty good sound out of a ceramic cart, and if you subscribe to the theory that simplicity in the signal path is good, you could make the argument that there are technical advantages to a ceramic.

Yes, before any of the pedants jump in and point out that that was not a complete list, I actually own several MA2002e carts, but I'm talking about what the vast majority of carts available are, not weird outliers like that.

As for your buzzing, how is the TT grounded to the preamp? I would disconnect and reseat the RCA cables (WITH THE POWER OFF) and also check if there is a separate ground wire that it is firmly attached and unbroken. Also maybe R&R the headshell in case one of those contacts is oxidized.
 
Yep, get a new replacement diamond stylus for it. It's a decent cartridge, actually.
But if the console buzzes and hums, it sure doesn't look like a new stylus would mend it! Sounds like it is in dire need of restoration.
 
The RCA cables are original. Probably no good. There’s a couple of different places to plug it into the amplifier part. One is underneath and I can’t see what that says, that’s where it was plugged in originally. On the back where the auxiliary inputs are there is a phone spot. Tried that and still get the buzz. Figure I’ll try new RCA’s then go from there. Waiting for my DEOxit to show up from amazon so I can get to cleaning.
 
Looks like a need a new cartridge. Was cleaning things up and one of the little tabs just fell off when I pulled the wire off it. Should I just replace it with that EV 26 someone said it is or is there other options?
 
Well, you're going to need to investigate what you have for a preamp - if you do not have the ability to run a MM cartridge, you are going to have to either stick with ceramic, or get an outboard phono stage to go between the TT and preamp.
 
How would one tell if it has that? It has a phono jack place on the unit. It was plugged in underneath the amp somewhere where I can’t really see but I moved the RCA jacks to the Phono section plugs to check the buzz.
 
Either let us know what the preamp/integrated amp/receiver brand/model is, or post some pics. Or are there multiple inputs marked "HI" and "LO", "CER" and "MM" or similar?
 
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