The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

My records (see video) and my stylus (see photo) are clean, and there's nothing wrong with my reproducer, but every time I try to play one, this happens sooner or later. What am I doing wrong?

Does your tone arm move freely across the span of a record if you move it by hand?

Wow that's not good at all

I do not know the answer, but I wonder....could the weight of the tonearm be too light?

hope you can resolve the issue!

Phono-Phan wrote:Does your tone arm move freely across the span of a record if you move it by hand?

It does. this is a two-section wooden Sonora tone-arm with a spring inside it, and I thought that might be the problem, but it plays both lateral records and Edison Diamond Discs just fine.

Vertical cut records have very shallow grooves so don't track very well. Could it be that your phonograph is slightly out of level?

I have the same tone arm on my Sonora. It is very important that the phonograph is level front to back and side to side.

It's pretty level -- the first picture is front-to-back, and the second is side-to-side.

What else could it be?

Side to side looks out of level some. Try that first.

If you play different Pathé records, does it seem to happen around the same spot on each of them, or do some play for say 15 seconds, and others for 90 seconds, before they jump the groove?
If they all seem to jump say at around 15-20 seconds into the song, it's some sort of problem with the tonearm.

All disc phonographs have a characteristic called centrifugal force, or a tendency to push the tone arm to the outer edge of the record. More modern quality phonographs had an anti-skate system that countered that phenomenon. These early phonographs had no such method to deal with it except to adjust the levelling. If all else is working as it should be, then I would suggest leaning your Sonora toward the front enough to counter the centrifugal force. Cheers, Russie