record player flex query

dolittle

hello all
have a record player from the 70`s
flex on the player is blue and black
can i presume the blue is live and black is the neutral?

2011

Which color is fused? This would identify the phase (live) conductor.

dolittle

hello
no plug top on flex

2011

Often appliances such as this are not “polarity conscious”. In other words it will make no difference which way around it is connected. I can’t say for certain that this applies in this case but this is likely to be the case.

Perhaps a Google of the make and model may help find a manual.

Malcomex

I would presume blue is the phase color

I don't ever recall seeing those colors but red yellow blue and then black were the old 3P colors

Red and black was the norm, maybe it's an import or something

2011

Like many others I have seen red, yellow and blue phase colours. However, I have never seen a single phase appliance lead supplied with a blue phase. Having said that I can't recall seeing one with a lead that has blue and black coloured conductors either.

Malcomex

2011 wrote: »

Like many others I have seen red, yellow and blue phase colours. However, I have never seen a single phase appliance lead supplied with a blue phase. Having said that I can't recall seeing one with a lead that has blue and black coloured conductors either.

I was making a big assumption alright

I've certainly never seen it in all my time

NeuralNetwork

What brand is the turntable?

Before the 1970s there was no single European or international standard for flex colours and fixed wiring colours and they often clashed, quite dangerously.

Green for example in France was a phase colour.
Red in Germany was the Earth.
While in the UK Red was live and Green was earth.

The logic of those colours made sense in each context so only seemed bizarre if you were used to one or the other.

Blue and black wires on a turntable are likely to have been from some old continental wiring colour scheme. Black is more likely to be the phase colour with blue as neutral.

In all likelihood it's a European appliance so would have been connected with a reversible plug anyway, so won't really matter which way around they are. It's not going to matter to it as it's not polarised.

Honestly, there's no way of telling without opening the appliance, as there were just so many systems prior to harmonisation in the 1970s, but at least you only have two wires and no Earth.

Quantum Erasure

Weird flex, but ok

Risteard81

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

What brand is the turntable?

Before the 1970s there was no single European or international standard for flex colours and fixed wiring colours and they often clashed, quite dangerously.

Green for example in France was a phase colour.
Red in Germany was the Earth.
While in the UK Red was live and Green was earth.

The logic of those colours made sense in each context so only seemed bizarre if you were used to one or the other.

Blue and black wires on a turntable are likely to have been from some old continental wiring colour scheme. Black is more likely to be the phase colour with blue as neutral.

In all likelihood it's a European appliance so would have been connected with a reversible plug anyway, so won't really matter which way around they are. It's not going to matter to it as it's not polarised.

Honestly, there's no way of telling without opening the appliance, as there were just so many systems prior to harmonisation in the 1970s, but at least you only have two wires and no Earth.

Indeed. And in the south there were brown, red and yellow phases with blue neutrals at one stage (whilst in the north it remained red, yellow and blue phases with a black neutral) before harmonisation to brown, black and grey phases with a blue neutral.

Extreme care is required. In spite of knowing all of these variations I still nearly connected L3 to N once in a factory at an interface between old and new colours because of the difference in the colours. Thankfully I caught myself on whilst I was doing it. (And inspection and testing would have revealed the error before energising it!)

dolittle

its a toshiba turntable
made in Japan
got my hands on the rest of the separates from the system
black is live, blue is neutral

Malcomex

dolittle wrote: »

its a toshiba turntable
made in Japan
got my hands on the rest of the separates from the system
black is live, blue is neutral

Good one

Black seems to be a phase color in japan

alan4cult

Japan is 100V
You got a transformer OP?

Malcomex

alan4cult wrote: »

Japan is 100V
You got a transformer OP?

I think a potential hazard can arise then if you connect a bunch of separates to an isolating transformer

Not saying it will but a isolating transformer fitted domestically normally supplies 1 item of equipment

dolittle

alan4cult wrote: »

Japan is 100V
You got a transformer OP?

info plate has 220 volts on it

NeuralNetwork

Basically if you go back before the early 1970s you would have encountered several wiring colours in flexes in Ireland as appliances were imported from British and European supply chains.

It was only sometime in the early 70s that things harmonised to L: brown, N: blue, and E: yellow/green stripes

Malcomex

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Basically if you go back before the early 1970s you would have encountered several wiring colours in flexes in Ireland as appliances were imported from British and European supply chains.

It was only sometime in the early 70s that things harmonised to L: brown, N: blue, and E: yellow/green stripes

Brown blue didn't come in that early

Red Black was around til much later

Was at least 10 years or so later when the latest SP and 3P colors came in

Risteard81

Malcomex wrote: »

Brown blue didn't come in that early

Red Black was around til much later

Was at least 10 years or so later when the latest SP and 3P colors came in

Flexes harmonised decades earlier.

Malcomex

Risteard81 wrote: »

Flexes harmonised decades earlier.

Didn't know that

NeuralNetwork

Malcomex wrote: »

Didn't know that

Flexes were harmonised by the EEC / CENELEC as part of ensuring a common European market for appliances in the early 1970s. The need to fit different flexes for different markets was a significant barrier to entry and manufacturing overhead and was a considerable danger to consumers as you could have a situation like someone assuming that say a red German earth wire was the live, and connecting the outer casing of an appliance to the live terminal of a plug.

Those colour codes were then adopted by the IEC and became the norm in much of the world, certainly the parts of it that use 230 Volts (220/240V) for power.

Due to several European markets not using the de facto pan-European standard, the CEE 7 plug/socket systems (Ireland, UK, Cyprus, Malta, Denmark, Italy and Switzerland) there are millions of people who may need to fit their own plugs.

It was extremely common in Ireland and Britain to have appliances delivered with no plug fitted until the 1990s and in Ireland it was (and may yet become common again due to Brexit) to have appliances delivered with continental plugs that needed to be changed by the end user. That's also a major issue in Denmark and Italy, where you'll quite frequently get stuff delivered with a Schuko plug that doesn't necessarily fit your wall sockets.

North America did its own thing and still does, but also the North American market was always much more less likely to ever have consumers wiring plugs as the whole region has a single standard.

Fixed wiring in buildings didn't change until much later as there was far less urgency. However, as wiring regulations have moved towards more and more harmonisation those colours also became standard across Europe. It also removes barriers to entry for wires and cables as things have moved to a single harmonised mutually recognised set of standards.

liveandnetural

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=75401