Record Skipping

ThirdMan

Hi. The needle is skipping through one of my tracks. I initially thought it was a problem with the record, but it actually plays perfectly on my second deck.

I only have them 10 days. I'm not that familiar with them, so no doubt it's something obvious. Nonetheless , I can't make it out. The weight and anti-skate is the same on each one.

Funny enough, a review on Discogs complained of exctly the same thing?

cranky bollix

it sounds like the weights to me or a dodgy needle, have ya tried swapping the needles over.

there are plenty of youtube vids that show ya how to set them up.

ThirdMan

The needles aren't great actually. I'm in the process of buying new ones. I'll try switching them over. Cheers.

ThirdMan

Dodgy needle it is.

I told you it would be something obvious. Not obvious enough for me though!

Funny that I haven't had a problem with it until now. I've given them a fair bit of usage the past week or so.

And the guy on Discogs, we both complained of skipping on the second track?

Confused-again.com

jtsuited

don't be confused, it makes perfect sense.

there's probably a part in the track that causes the needle to nearly jump out. dodgy needle on both of your (as in yours and his) decks = skipping on the same track complaints on discogs.

ThirdMan

jtsuited wrote: »

don't be confused, it makes perfect sense.

there's probably a part in the track that causes the needle to nearly jump out. dodgy needle on both of your (as in yours and his) decks = skipping on the same track complaints on discogs.

Cheers man. I'm new to vinyl (pathetic excuse).

hans aus dtschl

You're grand, there's a learning curve with vinyl, and it all takes time to learn.

General rule of thumb if you come across an issue with sound is to compare the decks against each other (exact same settings on height, weight, anti-skate), then swop needles, then cables (mixer channels)...Should isolate any problem down to the individual component...

ThirdMan

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

You're grand, there's a learning curve with vinyl, and it all takes time to learn.

General rule of thumb if you come across an issue with sound is to compare the decks against each other (exact same settings on height, weight, anti-skate), then swop needles, then cables (mixer channels)...Should isolate any problem down to the individual component...

Great advice. Cheers!

electrogrimey

Might be an idea to make this into a general vinyl Q&A thread, seeing as there's a good few people on here moving over to vinyl, or recently have.

Just to double check I'm setting everything up right:

Anti-skate

Put needle on blank record, or bit after track ends, and adjust until the needle sits still.

Weight

Adjust until tone arm floats, then add on weigh according to needle, generally 1.5 - 3.

Wrong or right?

BaZmO*

electrogrimey wrote: »

Might be an idea to make this into a general vinyl Q&A thread, seeing as there's a good few people on here moving over to vinyl, or recently have.

Bleedin scenesters. Vinyl is so last year. :rolleyes: I've back to CDs, the sound quality just so superior.

hans aus dtschl

Make anti-skate = 0
Screw the weight off enough to float the needle exactly level: weight = 0
Needle should now fly over and back above the record happily
Adjust the height until the needle floats at exactly the height of the record
Screw on an extra amount of weight according to the needle manufacturer's spec (mine are around 3g)
Add anti-skate equal to the needle's weight or as near as you can get.

That's pretty much it. Should take no more than 30 seconds but most people never do it, even big name DJ's just screw down loads of weight and hope for the best.

electrogrimey

And what about tone-arm height? That's one that perplexes me.

hans aus dtschl

When the weight and skate are 0, the tonearm will be perfectly level and floating....bring the height up or down so that the needle floats at exactly the height of the top of the record.

Then, add the weight and skate again. Done!


Or just be like a pro and add full weight, full height, full anti-skate and blu-tack coins to the headshell and complain that the sound is muffled!

dubsbhoy

electrogrimey wrote: »

Might be an idea to make this into a general vinyl Q&A thread, seeing as there's a good few people on here moving over to vinyl, or recently have.

Great Idea

And seeing as you mentioned it...............

The hole in the middle of some of the vinyl i have bought has been penetrated deep :pac: is there anything i can do to fix this, these records are virtually impossible to touch off when they are playing without jumping all over the place

hans aus dtschl

A few schools of thought I've seen on that are:
Add a label OVER both sides of the the centre-hole, re-punching to suit your centre-pin.
Wrap a small piece of paper/card/debris THROUGH the centre-hole,both above and below the label to make the existing hole tighter (think of a how a shoelace makes the shoelace-hole tighter by filling it up, if you get me)

Personally...I have yet to come across a record that valuable yet that damaged, and have always been able to replace the damaged record, thankfully.

dubsbhoy

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

A few schools of thought I've seen on that are:
Add a label OVER both sides of the the centre-hole, re-punching to suit your centre-pin.
Wrap a small piece of paper/card/debris THROUGH the centre-hole,both above and below the label to make the existing hole tighter (think of a how a shoelace makes the shoelace-hole tighter by filling it up, if you get me)

Personally...I have yet to come across a record that valuable yet that damaged, and have always been able to replace the damaged record, thankfully.

Sound, cheers mate

jtsuited

+1 for the sticky regarding calibrating your turntables etc. I'm usually a complete nerd with equipment but for some reason with my decks I am careless.

dubsbhoy

Actually how hard would it be to have some kind of rubber ring/washer to stick on the vinyl ?

Anyone got a phone number for Dragons Den ?

dubsbhoy

jtsuited wrote: »

+1 for the sticky regarding calibrating your turntables etc. I'm usually a complete nerd with equipment but for some reason with my decks I am careless.

How about a sticky forum............way too many stickies already, would be handy if they were in a separate forum