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I've got a buddy at work who gave me a stack of homemade mini records from the '50 that his father made. I've been recording them on my PC to eventually make a CD out of. They've been very hard to play reliably. I'm using a cheap old table with the auto-return disabled (the label area is about 3" across), a Stanton cartridge with about 2-3 times the recommended force to keep it from jumping out of the inconsisent groove, and I've mounted the cartridge askew to help compensate for the small record size. I'm only washing them with dish soap, since I don't know what these old things can take. So far they're at least understandable. It's a fun project.
Follow Ups:
Forget the soap. Get a Discwasher brush and fluid scrub away, let dry. The discwasher brush kit isn't too much money. As for the trackin problem I would say the tonearm is a junker. Instead of maxing out the force on the tonearm weight add a penny or two to the top of the headshell. A ghetto but functional way would be to cut a small piece of duct tape into a square fold it over in one piece and adhere it to the to of the headshell. Press a penny on the sticky side. The weight of the penny should help. Another possibility is that the cartridge has a bad stylus with a worn suspension. It sounds like one of the generic tables where the cartridge simply pops into the arm. Those little arms are cheaply made and don't have much weight. I bet the penny trick will help. As long as your not concerned with preserving the records too much dont worry about the excessive tracking weight.
Thanks for the suggestions.I know the table I'm using is fine. It's just that once I get halfway into a side, I'm into the area where the label would be on an LP. By the time I get close to the end, it's skating all over the place no matter what I do. I discovered that aligning the cartridge with the end of a side in mind helped the skating problem. It's fairly far off at the beginning of a side, but it seems to work better this way. The extra force is partly because of operator error with the lathe. The author of the records complains that the records skip because he can't figure out the best setting and the chip (the string of laquer cut from the record) keeps getting in the way. The extra force helps keep the stylus from wandering in shallow grooves, and also seems to reduce surface noise.
You seem to have the right idea. Most turntables are not built to play records where the grooves go so close to the spindle. You might want to try reducing the amount of overhang quite a bit, say as much as a half inch. and then align the cartridge with the end of the side. Have fun.
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