Turntable manufacturers HATE him! See how this $20 thrift store record player can play 16" transcription discs with ONE WEIRD TRICK!

Looks like somebody REALLY wanted a fully manual record player.

You may be able to claim the title of the first person ever to play a 16" disk with the stylus on the wrong side of the record.

Turntable build quality = hideous BUT repurposing abilities = A+++ Loved it!

Agh! Seeing the tonearm go all the way round was like watching someone's knee bend backwards 😂

The sound quality improvement from your modifications along with playing that broadcast quality, transcription record is nothing short of INCREDIBLE Kevin! I am amazed sir. Bravo!!!

Something like this is exactly the kind of thing I would try. It’s cheap enough that you don’t feel bad about butchering it, but sounds good enough to make it a worthwhile project. Now if only it could be adapted to play 16 rpm records…

I never knew 16" records existed! Thanx for showcasing this!

This is the best record player video I've seen in a while.

Love the Realistic mixers. So solid. I have three. One since 1985. Never a problem.

Very cool! I really enjoyed how you hacked it to play that kind of record when it wasn't supposed to. But I originally misread the thumbnail and thought it played 16rpm records instead of 16 inch. I had a record player when I was a kid that played 16, 33, 45, and 78 rpm records, and I've always been fascinated by the 16rpm speed - especially since I didn't know what it was for until the Internet came along. Maybe someday you'll look into that kind of record? I don't know if you have already, but it would be interesting.

Great hack job. I had a reel to reel in the late 80's that took upto 6 inch spools. I found that if I took the top plate off, along with the tape guides, head cover and the speed control knob, I could just fit 7 inch reels onto it. :)

I thought this was a fun and happily unique record player / turntable. The speed on the one we reviewed was perfect out of the box and wouldn’t be half bad as a beginner setup. Guitar Center was selling them with the speakers for $84 last Christmas.

I bought the same one you have for new last year ! I had been given a bunch of vinyl records and decided to try this beginner vinyl player with the small speakers... I then got real speakers and a car bass sub hooked it all up and now I have one hell of a setup ! And for very cheap ! Love this little vinyl player ! I love the Blutooth mode also ! Not bad at all ! Nice video dude !

Who would have thought such a cheap turntable would end up being so useful with just a few mods!

I like what you do, it is a little wistful as well as technically accurate and informative. I like the old music.

Many kiddie turntables from back in the day had a tonearm that could spin all the way around; I have such a turntable which can be seen in my 16-inch transcript video. However, I was intelligent enough to know right from the start that if I place the needle the wrong way, the record would still play forwards because the record is still spinning in the correct direction

Just when I thought I've seen every kind of audio video, you come up with this idea. Genius!

Very interesting, nice to see a lower end turntable get some extra functionality! Since it was partially broken, it would have just been seen as ewaste, but now it’ll actually be better than before. Plus the cosmetics aren’t too important when it didn’t cost much to get.

I found it fascinating that the worn 78 sounded way worse with the 3 mil stylus. I thought it was really cool what you did with the tone arm. I'm sure it changed the correct tracking angle for regular records but just what you did is so cool. I misread the title. For some reason I was thinking it was going to play a 16 rpm record and not a 16 inch record. I enjoyed this one. Thank you for sharing.

The instrumental track at the beginning of the 16” disc sounds like it was used in a Bugs Bunny cartoon!

Amazing. That transcription disc is wonderful. Nice memories of old cartoons from the '40s and '50s.

I love that red glow given off by that 16” disc.

Thanks for making this video! For years I've been thinking about getting something that can play 16 inch discs. Modifying one of these is the affordable and practical option I've seen!

That 720° tone arm spin. For the records with reaaally freaky run out grooves ;)

The place where the majority of Fallouts music came from. I love it.

This is like watching Joe Pera review audio equipment. Definitely not being mean, it's one of the most soothing things on the internet! Thank you!

Your conclusion about the needle size is also my experience. I digitized many 78's with an LP needle with very good results. Later I switched to a dedicated needle and while the overal sound is much better, specially on clean records, the sound on old worn out records is better with an LP needle! This is because the detail low in the groove is lower then on the surface, but the groove is cleaner down under!

I can imagine a 1970's Prog Rock band wanting to use those 16" albums, especially Yes.

seeing accessible ways to play 16 inch records makes my archivist heart flutter!

one of the coolest things ive seen someone do with a turntable

This is fascinating. I’d never before heard of such discs.

Entertaining from start to finish! Thanks Kevin!

Great 78 record :) interesting you can play with the LP stylus . Never seen a transcription disk here in uk, not sure if they were ever here . It's got great sound :) Thanks for posting

Songs played on the turntable 4:47 Rusty Dean - Your Broken Heart Is Showin' Through 5:23 Rusty Dean - Hey Jude 6:04 Johnny Marvin - Under The Ukulele Tree 10:46 Richard Maltby Orchestra - Samba Caliente 11:18 Richard Maltby Orchestra - Summer Serenade 11:47 Richard Maltby Orchestra - Boom-Dee-Ay Boogie 12:22 Richard Maltby Orchestra - Spider Dance 13:08 Richard Maltby Orchestra - We'll Meet at the End of the Rainbow

I used to have the Realistic mixer you have there. Great little mixers. I think the sound is very good from your demonstration of a $20 player.

When you played the record "backwards" with the stylus going into the grooves, I believe that's also how the old Record Runner and the RokBlok work.

I’ve watched thousands of KZfaq turntable videos. This is a first! Good job, @vwestlife 👏🏼

Hell yeah, Jawbreaker's "Jet Black" at 4:20 in the video

I love it when you take trash and hack it into something with a purpose again. I have never encountered a 16" disc (nor a 16prm record for that matter) in the wild but I always knew about them.

Wow, never saw one of these transcription records before! VERY cool! AND it plays 78s. Very nice find, this cheap thing!

Brilliant as usual, great job!

I used to have a DJ mixer like that one - bought from Tandy - the UK equivalent of Radio Shack!

Very cool modification. A great affordable way to play the transcription discs.

Its not a bug its a feature!

I love this! Good work!

This was my first LP record player I’ve got and that got me in to vinyl

Interesting! Love your videos!

Amazing, very well done.

Worn and scratched old 78 rpm record is the reason that the current optional styli for newer and current magnetic cartridges are 2.5 to 2.7 mil, to play lower in the grooves below the scuffs and minor scratches on the surface of the records. Good and interesting video!

Great find! Aside from the modern niche (expensive) turntables advertised as being made for ET playback a couple of the old British idlers, the Collaro 4T200 and Garrard 4HF had sufficiently long arms mounted far enough away from the platter with narrow arm mounts that would permit a transcription disc to play. Unfortunately the prices of good examples of those tables are starting to rise.

OMG! That sounds excellent!

Playing the 78 RPM record with the LP stylus lost some volume, But man, did it clean up the audio! TIL: If you have worn 78s, give them a go with an LP stylus! Who knew? Software might clean up some of the "hiss" for archiving digitally.

Nice a new video about turntables it's like Christmas when you upload a new video !.

Thats insane. the ridiculously cheap multi-record system from gemini! Great video as always with the turntables and Audio equipment! I am currently on a hunt for a Realistic clairnette 114 turntable stylus or whole cartridge. I can find styluses for it, but the whole cart is another fiasco- or even finding something that compatible with it... at least documented or noted anywhere. WHAT FUN!

What an awesome repurpose of a cheap, messed up record player! Also, I saw you added some videos of German Perpetuum Ebner (PE) 2000s series of turntables in your "favorites" playlist on your record channel. In fact, these are very interesting and specially constructed masterpieces of engineering. They're able to play a stack of up to 10 records and even repeat a record if wanted so without an overarm! And it has a very clever trick of detecting record sizes - there's a little pin that gets pushed down once a record is being placed and moves a spring-loaded lever assembly back (indicating there's a record on the platter). And there's a little feeler that bumps into the edge of 12 inch records if they're being played (platters are about 10 3/4 inches big) and if it doesn't detect anything it'll play a 7 inch. You may think that it sounds pretty simple, yet it still has another trick up its sleeve! As the platter mat has a higher outer edge, if a 10 inch disc is being played the pin won't be pushed through all the way and the PE knows to put the stylus down on the 10 inch position - what a clever quirk! And yet it still doesn't stop with highly unique features; the cueing is done by pushing a pin that lifts up the entire tonearm assembly (including the resting post) and js activated by pushing the selection lever over to the left. That pushes a second leverage which hooks onto the drive gear and "pulls the pin up" as it rotates. Perpetuum Ebner carried this exact design from their crystal cartridge models like the PE 2001 (which I own 3 of), all the way to the 2020 which was considered "the most reliable audiophile record changer" and is still highly popular amongst vintage hifi enthusiasts. If you ever see anything labeled "PE 20xx" or "Telefunken TW/Musikus 509" (90% shared parts to a PE) you should definitely pick it up and do a video about it! Even the low end models had great sound quality and if properly cleaned and lubricated they'll last you a lifetime. It's great to know that even the cheapest models were made to last. But be aware that the mechanism might seem scary (as it's 100 times more complicated and thought-out than a BSR) at first, but once you understand the purpose of every lever and linkage you'll truly understand just how impressive a record changer could be at any price point! Cheers from Germany.

This is outstanding news! I’ve had a stack of 15” transcription discs for decades and have been looking for a cool hack to play them. Well done! I’ll have to give this a try. Thank you!

Definitely fit for purpose! A great idea for using a budget turntable :)

This is fantastic.

very interesting video, like ever!

I was wrong about it playing backwards too, Then I thought Oh, Yeah: Geometry is weird! LOL. It's all the same to the stylus, Just backwards from OUR visual perspective. On a side note, playing 16" records is cool, BUT it would have been EVEN better if 16 RPM was ALSO tossed in!😜

Cat and mouse chase music and mel blanc era. Amazing and educational

That record is bigger than my car's wheels, awesome! X^D

Great job

Cool find...I never saw this model. I was surprised to see speaker outs on this player. I would have picked this up right away for $20. I laughed at the 360 degree tonearm at first....it almost seems like it was supposed to be like that. Kudos for playing Jawbreaker's Dear You for a second....that is a great album!

Always brilliant but you've outdone yourself here 👏👏👏👏

Well Done! Myself, I have refurbished, and gathered parts for at least two turntable projects; maybe I'll make a 78 RPM, or Transcription turntable since you, and this KZfaq Channel has motivated me.🔉🎵🎶

That's the best way to modify a cheap turntable.

that's really cool how you modified it to play the transcription disc.

Excellent!

On the 78rpm disc, give it a wash first, then play it while still wet. That should clean up the sound. (6:50) As for having the auto-stop disabled, that's a "plus" for the unit as sometimes the auto-stop can stop the platter prematurely before the stylus has reached the run-out groove.

Sounds great and it looks pretty 😻 use a spring on the support post on the rear of the tone arm. Wide round one to slip over the post to hold the arm up. 😊

Nice to see what can be done with a little creativity with something that might have ended up as e-waste otherwise. 👍

I wish I had this player back in the 80s because I had a toy that had what's called an ozen box which contains a small record inside for the toy's sounds and I could have used a player with a tone arm broken like that to record the sounds of the toy to digital.

Great video!!!!!!

Great job vwestlife

1:24 - Altec-Lansing had 'jumped the shark' by then :(

Great video- I have one of those giant red records with old Pepto Bismol commercials on it. I played it on my Kenwood KD-500 turntable by removing the entire Sumiko tone arm assembly and holding it in my hand, propped on the table. I made a short video, I'll post it if I can find it.

That doesn't sound to bad at all. Even with the youtube conversion. Nice modification! I don't think the transcriptiondiscplayer industry is gonna be glad with this video 🤣

Pretty certain the previous owner had a modded cartridge on this. It's some sort of crazy DIY scratch turntable, I think.

Thank you

Ingenious 😂🎉

Very interesting mod, indeed!

I actually did something very similar with a cheap crosley suitcase player to play my transcription discs. Far far cheaper than a transcription turntable and sounds pretty decent with a better cartridge.

I have the same Tandy mixer. I was using it briefly 25 years ago to make sound on sound recordings before I could afford a 4-track recorder. Will have to dig it out (it's under the bed!) to see whether it improves the sound quality of my turntable.

Wonderful video, Kevin! No doubt you've just saved a lot of people a lot of money. I don't have any 16-inch transcription discs, but I do have some 78s (mostly late-40s, early 50s) and have noticed the sound improvement sometimes when playing them with the wrong stylus. I appreciate you confirming what I suspected.

The thrift store classifying this as "furniture" seems about right.

Nice hack; I didn't know about 16" discs at all!

That 16” is super neat.

I love that 78. Very few of my own 78’s are as good

That really sounds nice using the radioshack mixer !

Pretty slick...

If this record player is easily accessible, would you recommend it otherwise for basic home use? That music on the 16" transcription record sounds like music you'd hear on the original Tom & Jerry series!

I came in thinking this turntable plays 16 RPM but I misread the video thumbnail. 😅 Not to worry. Still interesting.

I had the same mixer. Garbage picked it as a kid. Used it to fade music in and out doing a film slide to vhs conversion.

Great use of cheap machine :)

[NJ] Thrift Store: Just a bit of VWestlife needed. Nowhere else can a "cheap" find be removed of parts, creating a Greater 'Find', and made to sound so swell. Why does music reminds me of those Wonderful 'Old' Cartoons? 6:05 .. 11:00 ... *Thanks!*

3:50 - Hmm. I was guessing that the the height of the pivot needed to be raised (overhang adjustment). UPDATE: I believe the pivot got smashed in somehow and the height you set it at is was what it was originally!

“ thank you, God!… For letting me find this guys KZfaq channel!” - “For Realz!” Lol :-) I think I may have told you last time when I introduced myself but I’m a retired Hollywood sound engineer… You just taught me an amazing trick today that would’ve really come in handy back in the 90s and saved me countless months if not years and tens of thousands of dollars! On The Cambridge cedar system” Real time vinyl pop, Click and Crackle remover! - for what it’s worth? Back in the early 90s? That technology was LITERALLY more expensive than my freaking house in the Hollywood Hills!!!! LOL Turns out? I just needed a different needle!!! - HAHAHA! - NOW you tell me! Lol :-) PS?!? - my heart almost stopped when you showed the black RadioShack mixer! - oh my God!… THAT was my first ever mixer!! (it sounds weird to normal people but your first mixer is one of those important things to sound guys! Am I right??? :-) Cheers! - Judson & Buddy! - have a great day everyone!

Can't wait for the 21"s to arrive. Playing the record the other way round just looks so painfully beautiful! Now that made me think: is there a turntable with two or more tonearms? Hope that idea didn't awaken something from a storage area somewhere!