The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Here is a free strobe disc for fast and easy calibration of your antique phonograph!
-Use with AC current at 60Hz(standard in United States) and a normal incandescent light bulb.

Instructions:
1.Print out strobe disc image on your home computer.
2.Cut out disc and punch out center hole.
3.Place disc on phonograph turntable.
4.Illuminate phonograph's turntable with incandescent light running on 60Hz AC power (standard in USA).
5.Adjust speed control until outer pattern appears to stand still.

-Your phonograph is now perfectly calibrated, time to enjoy some music!
(Note: this image can be resized if needed, it will still work)

Printer friendly image:(Will print 6.5 inches in size - save picture to edit print size.) High resolution image:

Here's a link to a program that you can print out a strobe for any speed at 50 or 60Hz.

http://www.myvintagetv.com/strobe.htm

Excellent! I just got my machine calibrated. I actually had it pretty close just going by where it sounded right to me.

Thanks for taking the time to make this!

That's great banjo_picker, I am happy it worked for you!

-Thanks ChuckA, that looks like a good program to use too.

Very useful - I wish I'd had one of these years ago when I started collecting records. But as about half of my current collection is acoustic, including some very old ones, I use an inexpensive tachometer that works of a bit of reflective tape on the turntable: those oldies seem to run from the high 60's rpm up to above 80. it's hard to pitch most of them accurately, but at least with the Carusos there are at least two books out there with rpm reading for each recording.