Replacing Turntable Felt..

[SignatureSeriesOwner]

I've been forced to do this to the felt on my Cardinal Phonograph (it's waiting for me at the Post Office) because of the shape of the cabinet, having felt in the shape it was in would just be an embarrassment.





It looked worse in person than the photo. In several places, the needle had actually dug through and left scratch marks on the metal platter itself.

This turntable, I have no questions on. It's a simple taping off the edges and spindle hole, spraying the adhesive, and then applying the felt.


This involves my new VV 1-5. The platter felt/velvet wasn't up to snuff when I bought it, so I decided to try the warm water and dish detergent approach mentioned earlier here. Big mistake. Now it's in tatters, and I need to replace it. My question is, how would I go about doing it so it looked "original" ? It's not flush with the sides, and the entire platter is only 9" in diameter. It looks as if the original felt is "tucked under" the lip of the platter. To add new felt, would cutting it flush with the lip work, or would it look too raggety do you think? Has anyone else done a similar job that could shed some insight?

[martinola]

Hey SSO!

I ran into the same issue while restoring a Brunswick back in the 1970s. In my case, I ended up settling for "good enough" (which wasn't really all that good). In the old days, I'll bet they did it with die cutting. The thing that comes to mind for the 21st century is laser-cutting. I did a Google search and found a custom laser-cutting service.

http://www.customlasercutting.com/info/capabilities

(I'm not sure if they would be able to do velvet.) It looks like they would work from a set of measurements. I'm sure that it would be fairly expensive. I sort of remember somebody on ebay offering precision-cut felt, but I'm not sure if that was for custom sizes.

Are you sure that the turntable doesn't have a close fitting ring that the material tucks under? I know that some turntables do. In absence of all that, I'd try to get a disk of the proper diameter laid over the material on a piece of flat plywood and cut around the edge using a sharp razor. I'll be curious to see what you end up doing. Good luck!

Regards,

Martin

[Brad]

I replaced the felt on a columbia restoration I did (http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... ?f=7&t=146)

What I did was to take a piece of aluminum flat stock (I think ¾" wide) and drilled a hole at one end that fit over the spindle. Then I determined where the edge of the felt would be and used a hack saw to cut a slot in the aluminum bar at that point. Then using a box cutter razor blade with a sharp blade, I placed the bar over the spindle and the razor in the slot and just went around the table cutting off the excess. It came out real clean. You can see in the link above.

I have said many times here that I personally like the look of some age to my machines. I find new felt "Too new and too clean" for my taste. Perhaps someone has some ideas as to make new felt look old.

Good Luck!