Old Pathe Suitcase Turntable - Astatic 89t issues
 

Hello,

I have recently purchased said turntable and was planning on using it for fun just to play old beat up 78s and 45s. It was stated that there was a NOS Astatic 89t cart/stylus installed. The stylus does not look new to me but I have never seen one of these before. I have posted some pictures. Does everything look right? It is dual-tipped, one side for 45s and the other for 78s. When I play a 45 it sounds like it is etching the vinyl and the actual vinyl seems to change color a bit in the part that was played. It sounds ok except for a hum when the volume is turned up. When I play a 78 the etching sound is more pronounced from the stylus, loud enough to be heard over the sound of the music. I understand that these players track at the very high tracking force but this is not normal, is it? Perhaps my stylus is bad? Is there a way to adjust the tracking force on these units?

Also, how is the Astatic removed? Does it just slide out of the holder? Mine looks like there is some kind of glue in there and doesn't want to budge.

Thanks for any help/guidance you can provide!

http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/a...e/IMG_0130.jpg

http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/a...e/IMG_0129.jpg

http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/a...e/IMG_0128.jpg

Kinda looks like it mounts with the nut just inside the tonearm behind the knob. Ive seen some that had metal spring clips against the sides of the tonearm- those can be pried loose.

usually there is a spring to counterbalance the weight of the tonearm, make sure yours isn't missing. Best to check the stylus force, should be maybe 8-9 grams for that cartridge.

This looks like a cartridge that was installed later. The whole cartridge slides out of the holder and the entire needle/cartridge are replaced as one unit. Originally, this probably had a 3V crystal flip over (via the white knob) cartridge.

Concerning the problem you are having, I've seen this several times and it can be caused by several things. These units are not very gentle on records; but, they should not chew them up on the first play.

1. A defective stylus tip can cause the problem. 2. The suspension inside the cartridge might be shot. Over the years, the rubber suspension can get hard (even on NOS cartridges) and this can cause skipping, poor fidelity, and excessive record wear. 3. The tonearm may be tracking at too much pressure. The recommended tracking pressure for an 89T is 6-8 grams. I have a small digital scale that I bought from Harbor Freight and more times than not, the tonearm is tracking much heavier than it should be. Usually, there is a counterbalance spring at the rear of the tonearm. On some tonearms, this spring can easily be adjusted to give you the correct tracking pressure. On other tonearms, the spring is in a fixed position and the only way to lighten the pressure is to remove links from the spring until you get the pressure down where it needs to be. 4. The tonearm may be tracking crooked and/or the tonearm may not be moving as freely as it should. The only way to fix this problem is to either straighten the tonearm or take the tonearm apart, clean it, and relubricate it.

Concerning 89T's, they were a very popular cartridge in institutional record players because they were cheap, robust, and easy to replace. Now, 89T's are getting scarce and expensive. In many record players that use this cartridge, I've been installing conventional ceramic cartridges and modifying the amp to give a little more gain to compensate for the lower output of the .5V Pfanstiehl P226 cartridges vs. the 1.3V Astatic 89T cartridges.

I suspect the amp in your record player is a single tube job and for best results, you'll either have to find a 3V cartridge, or add an extra preamp tube to your chassis.

Likely is one of the problems that Radiotvnut posted, but here are some other things to keep in mind.....Vinyl records 45's especially (because they are often not kept in their paper jackets for storage) can get so much dirt in their grooves that the stylus of a correctly adjusted lightly tracking player will literally scrape a trail of dirt and debris out of the groove as it plays (I use the wood glue cleaning method* to save my needles on those records). Your amp and speakers likely lack the frequency response to fully realize this effect, but I'll tell you any way. 78 RPM records were not meant to be a HiFi format most players they saw when new ground the hell out of the grooves and thus made high frequency hash....78 era phono amps often had a deliberately limited frequency response so the treble range hiss would be suppressed along with some of the music. Mechanical era 78's and to an extent later electrical era ones made the discs out of shellac so that the playing surface would rapidly grind the non-precisely made steel needles to the shape and size of the groove. Bits of steel would lodge in the shellac and increase wear in newer gem styli, and create increased roughness and surface noise. When vinyl was developed it was billed as a durable LOW NOISE alternative to shellac.

Shellac can sound quite and awesome, but it has to be nearly a virgin disc. Case in point I have some Vdiscs that look to be unplayed, and sound about as good as vinyl on a modern light tracking player.....I then played one on a 20's windup and it never played even close to how good it first sounded again....A majority of 78's have been played on groove grinders so don't expect them to sound too good.

* Wood glue cleaning method: This only works on vinyl (NEVER use it on shellac and styrene records it will probably ruin them). PVA wood glues (Titebond II is recommended) do not stick to vinyl, but will stick to dirt in the grooves (and the labels), so coat the playing surface (but not the label) in it, let dry completely, and then peel it off. I've gotten muddy and moldy vinyl that was unplayable back to like new this way. No scratches or wear were present on those discs only dirt cleaning only removes garbage on the surface it is NOT able to fix parts of the surface that were scratched off from abuse.

Thanks for your responses. I just pulled the cartridge and it is an Astiac 89tx. Is this a compatible cartridge? Same as the 89t?

I meant it is an Astatic 81tx

Maybe the 81tx isn't compatible with stereo records like the 89t... that could be why it is chewing the vinyl ??

The 81 and 89 cartridges are supposed to be stereo compatible. The "T" version is sapphire and the "TX" version is diamond.

On the subject of 45's, many of them are pressed on styrene and this material wears quickly, especially when played with heavy tracking cartridges. Still, a player like what you have should not ruin them on the first play.

Your tone arm is likely too heavy for that cartridge. The average school record player didn't have a tone arm that thick or heavy looking. If you can somehow adust the tracking force by moving a spring, that should help it a lot. If it can't be adjusted, you need to investigate getting a new cartridge that can take a heavy tone arm.

If you look at the part that contains the needle while it's playing the record, it shouldn't "give" a lot with the pressure of the tone arm. From your description, it almost sounds like it's flexing under the extra weight and maybe the black plastic sides of the cartridge are scraping the record.

I've worked on many, many school record players with the 81 and 89T cartridges and they're very sturdy, but they don't need a lot of tone arm weight. As radionut says, 6-8 grams. If you can take a few more shots of the inner workings of the tone arm, we can tell you if it has any adjustments.

If there are no adjustments you could always drill a hole at the very back of the arm and add some counter weight...

I would never replace the cartridge in one of those!
Years ago, you could buy a Japanese made plastic tonearm from Olsons or somewhere else, that had the Calrad or Herald brand, usually for under $2.00.
I didn't think, they used the "Pathe" badging that late.
It must've stood for "pathetic". :D

Thanks for everyone's help with this, I really appreciate it! I bought a pretty cheap NOS Astatic 81T on eBay to see if that is the problem - it won't be here until Monday. I've checked the tracking force and it is around 9 grams. I'd like to try to get that down. I've attached a picture of the spring in the tonearm. It doesn't appear to be adjustable, but maybe I'm missing something.

http://i903.photobucket.com/albums/a...e/IMG_0138.jpg

I'm guessing by the looks of it, that it wasn't meant to be adjusted, more than likely since this was originally meant to have a crystal cartridge on it (and crystal cartridges usually tracked pretty heavy) it was probably set at the factory to track at about 9 or 10 grams which is usually where crystal cartridges tracked at and they meant for it to be non-adjustable.

Often if one end of the spring can be removed one can edit down the spring by chopping a few coils off, bending the end to hook on the old connection point, testing tracking force and repeating if necessary.