The resurgence in vinyl has caused a lot of my friends to buy record players in the past year. I’ve owned various turntables over the last 20 years and these friends usually text me whenever they don’t know how to fix their record player that sounds slow.
I normally give them 5 reasons why their turntable sounds bad, but often, the turntable platter itself isn’t moving at the proper speed which causes the music to sound slow. In this article I will give you the main reasons your turntable or record player might sound slow.
A list of facts about the tiny part on your turntable that plays an important role in vinyl record playback.
Turntable terminology can be confusing for a beginner. It took many years for me to properly understand just what all of these moving parts are doing in order to produce sound. I often found myself calling certain parts of the turntable by the wrong name, not really understanding their purpose.
Since falling in love with vintage gear several years ago, I’ve begun to educate myself more on how everything works. I’m often asked questions by friends who are setting up new stereo systems or have run into trouble operating the ones they own.
I’ve been asked a lot lately about the role of the stylus, the “needle” and cartridges in general. There are differences in each that are worth exploring further.
For the purposes below, I am going to focus simply on the stylus itself, not the entire cartridge. I think it’s important to separate the two and explain the purpose of each. An entire article could be written on cartridges alone (something I will probably write in the near future), so I felt it necessary to stick with just facts about the stylus.
I learned even more about the stylus while writing this article and I hope you do the same.
