The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

an inexpensive way to set the speed on any phonograph in real time. the laser tach is $ 13.95 including shipping and runs on one 9 volt battery. makes setting the speed on any phonograph simple and effective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... wrtm3exzHI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... w-zcGyDKb4

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/digital-photo-l ... on-contact

You can also get it at Amazon for $10.79. I have one of those and they work great for both cylinder and disk machines.
Harvey Kravitz

I bought one about a year ago based on a recommendation from a collector friend.

I like it. Very handy.

They do work well however the quality of the unit is poor in my opinion.

The first one drained the battery within a few days, unless removed which is slightly difficult because you need a screw driver to open the battery compartment. It failed completely after about 1 ½ years.

I bought a second one. It has the same problem with the battery draining.


If the second fails however, I'll buy a third. They are such a great improvement over trying to count the turns, especially with cylinders!

Maybe I've been lucky, but the one I have has never given any trouble and I love it.

Clay

There are always several ways to do most anything.

I personally tend to shy away from battery-operated gizmos, preferring to use things that do not need endless battery replacement.

That being said, an even less costly method
for examining and setting exactly the speed
of a phonograph is by using a stroboscopic disk
illuminated by a small neon lamp running from the 60-cycle, 120 volt AC from an ordinary wall outlet.

By doing a little math and a bit of drawing,
a strobe disk can be made for any speed.
Anyone curious about this can email me and I'll
be happy to discuss it in detail.

It's easy, it only takes a few minutes.
I have strobe disks that I made for my Edison
cylinder machine for 160 rpm, and 120 rpm.

The light source is simple to make too.
It involves using a small neon lamp such as
an NE-2 bulb, one side of which is wired in
series with a 100K ohm resistor, and then that
combination is wired to a lamp cord with a
regular 120 V plug on the end.

The whole can be carefully insulated using
heatshrink tubing over splice and resistor
so that the resistor becomes nothing more than
a wide spot in the cord to the neon lamp.

The procedure could not be easier:

Put the disk on the end of the mandrel, get
the machine going and hold the illuminated
neon lamp up close to the rotating disk.

If the machine is fast the marks will appear to
rotate clockwise, if slow they appear to
rotate counterclockwise, and when the machine
is exactly on speed, the marks stand still.

No batteries to go dead and a neon bulb lasts
almost indefinitely at that low current.
These little speed monitoring kits are simple
to make, and will be around and still working
well many many years after the latest battery
powered gizmo went into the landfill.

Chuck

At least for me, I only find it necessary to adjust speed fairly rarely--usually after some sort of maintenance or repair. And the unit has to be on only for a minute or two to get the job done. The battery in my laser unit (1 9-volt Energizer) has been in it for about 2 years and is still strong. And the laser unit works equally well with disc and cylinder machines.

Clay

I haven't used a strobe disc for anything since I bought the tach. The tach is much easier to use and more accurate than a strobe disc. BTW: I'm very familiar with strobes of all sorts, having bought my first professional strobe disc at least 50 years ago. I have placed a small piece of the reflecting tape unobtrusively on each of my most used machines so all I have to do is grab the tach if I need to set the speed to something other than normal.
I bought the laser unit shown sometime within the last year and have had no problems with it including battery life. If it did eat batteries, I would take the battery out between uses and keep it in the drawer with the tach. It is also very versatile: I have a Shopsmith with a variable speed drive, but no accurate readout but I can use this tach with that or any other tool. I wish this instrument had been available years ago when I was doing a lot of small engine work.

Jim


This is the one I have:

Same model I have Jim.

Clay

strobe discs are great, the down side to them is they are made for a single speed. the idea of the speed control on the phonograph is to be able to vary it to the speed desired, 90, 100, 120, 130, 144, 160, rpm etc. there is no way to make a strobe disc that will accommodate variable speeds.

if you collect or acquire early brown wax recordings that are 120 or 144 rpm you can set the speed of the phonograph in a few seconds using the tach and have the machine running at the correct speed before you begin to play the cylinder. no counting or having to try to see a two inch strobe stuck on the end of the mandrel. you can also run the machine at abstract speeds, i have made really excellent music recordings at 96 and 112 rpm, you can make the cylinder fit the song instead of editing the song to make it fit the cylinder. two people using a laser tachometer can have two machines running at exactly the same speed, regardless of what that speed may be.