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What turntable/tonearm is this?

tyeeslayer

tyeeslayer

Super Member
OK so this may be time consuming and a pain. I was watching Star Trek last night, the episode "A Piece of the Action". In one scene Spock is in a radio station and there is a studio turntable with a dual pipe tonearm. The only other duel pipe tonearm I have seen is on a Yamaha PF-1000 (800).
Is this tonearm where Yamaha got the dual pipe idea?
Any info on this tonearm/turntable?
Sorry I can't find a still picture to share.
 
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Not a pain at all; it's one of my favourite episodes. I'm watching it now and will have a look. :)
 
Seeing as how Star Trek ran from 1966 to 1969, I think its a safe bet to say that this is not a Yamaha PF 1000, as that came out in the 1980s.

Cheers
Mister Pig
 
Mister Pig said:
Seeing as how Star Trek ran from 1966 to 1969, I think its a safe bet to say that this is not a Yamaha PF 1000, as that came out in the 1980s.

Cheers
Mister Pig
Click to expand...

He suggested something else, as in "was Yamaha influenced by this design?" And that design is from, if Star Trek producers got their period correct to the rest of the episode, the 1920s or 30s.
 
Montycat said:
He suggested something else, as in "was Yamaha influenced by this design?" And that design is from, if Star Trek producers got their period correct to the rest of the episode, the 1920s or 30s.
Click to expand...
The one table Nimoy is using appears to have a single wand tone arm, and looks like an authentic turntable. In the colorized one it may just be a prop set and not be a functional turntable. Or it can be a broadcast type platter with prop sourced arm and switches. I would suspect its not truly functional. As far as influencing Japanese engineers to design a tone arm like the one on the PF-1000? I sure would not bet money on it.

Cheers
Mister Pig
 
Mister Pig said:
The one table Nimoy is using appears to have a single wand tone arm, and looks like an authentic turntable. In the colorized one it may just be a prop set and not be a functional turntable. Or it can be a broadcast type platter with prop sourced arm and switches. I would suspect its not truly functional. As far as influencing Japanese engineers to design a tone arm like the one on the PF-1000? I sure would not bet money on it.

Cheers
Mister Pig
Click to expand...

The black and white Nimoy picture has disappeared but that was some recent net nerd mashup, not from an episode. The other pics are from the Star Trek episode and it didn't look like something a set dec person would make up to me. She is moving the tonearm in the scene though the platter isn't in motion.

I searched around and don't see anything like it. Certainly it's a clunky beast.
 
olddude55 said:
Could it be a Burne Jones arm? They worked something like the arm on a Garrard Zero 100 and were around in the 1950s.

View attachment 1713195
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Kind of close though. The one on Star Trek appears to have no counter weight for such a large heavy head shell area. The props guys could have found an old/broken Burne Jones arm and made it look good for the show. It just really surprised me to see the duel pipe tone arm on a show from '68. Got me thinking if such a beast existed back then. Now I know it did.
 
Great episode, been many years since I've thought about it.

Took a look at that scene on Netflix, and I think the turntable and arm are a cobbled together set prop, made to look like something from the 1920s.

At the start of the scene, the platter on the right is indeed spinning and the woman tries to move the tonearm like she is going to put it on the record, but it won't move, so she fiddles with one of the knobs.

Besides the B-J tonearm, the arm in the scene also somewhat resembles the GE "Baton" A1-500, and the pickup head itself looks like some type of "horseshoe" electric magnetic pickup, like this one from RCA Victor.


76E65B03-1023-4492-9864-CA3D87531BFF.jpeg 1F7170BB-A9D2-4B33-A884-E847112A91D9.jpeg
 
This is probably some variation of the twin platter "reproducer" systems that were used for cinema sound prior to the introduction of magnetic recording. Here's one by French manufacturer Paillard, but since the one used for Star Trek would have been pulled out of a Hollywood studio warehouse, it might be by Western Electric, which pretty much owned the field in Hollywood cinema sound pre-WWII.

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It may not be evident from the photo, but the arm is a strictly horizontal boom, it has no vertical pivot. All the vertical movement is at the pickup only. The arm in the Star Trek picture looks to me as if it works the same way.
 
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