Five Years Later, I Repaired the Console Stereo

I mentioned that I inherited a console stereo from my aunt who passed away in 2019 and that I took delivery of the stereo courtesy my brother and nephew in December of that year. When it came, it had a known issue of the turntable not working, and I placed it on my list of someday: I would talk to the guys at the local record store and get their recommended repairman out to fix it or start taking it apart myself to figure out what was wrong. Someday.

Well, that someday became now because once my moose of an oldest son and I lift this stereo onto the record shelf that will go under it. The other record shelves from the Labor Day weekend are already holding records in the parlor; however, when sizing the shelf to go under the stereo, I go the width/length of the console correct, but I did not factor in the depth of the unit. the shelf is 13″ deep and the console is 18″ deep. So I constructed a couple of little “wings” to go under the ends of the stereo. I built them that they can hold records, without the backing I usually put on the units as this might just end up being a tunnel for cats. I screwed the two-by-fours together over the weekend, but this was apparently an Ozarks rain dance, so I have not yet been able to paint them.

The delay, though, has given me time to consider the problem of the turntable. So I watched a couple of YouTube videos on console stereo turntable repair and started my troubleshooting by popping one of the hillbilly gospel records I got in the grab bag gift I received in May. It kind of picked up some sound but not clearly, but the sound was strong. So I looked closely at the needle and cartridge and–wait a minute, this arm does not appear to actually have a needle.

So I went to TurntableNeedles.com and found what I hoped I needed (I was going on the console model number, which they do not recommend because someone might have replaced the cartridge which holds the needle which would mean the needle won’t match the console spec). I ordered it, waited for eleven days for the first class envelope to arrive, and then….

In two minutes, I popped out the old needle assembly which did, indeed, lack a stylus and popped in the new needle, and….

Hillybilly gospel loud and in the deep, rich low sound of an old console stereo.

I speculate that console stereos have that deep, rich sound because they were optimized for the lower end frequencies that AM radio preferred (or so I learned from Jean Shepherd’s Pomp and Circumstance on a show where he talked about the different microphones and why they changed–FM handles higher frequencies better, which might be one of the reasons vocal styles changed from low crooners in the AM days to higher pop music singers when FM became more prevalent).

So it took me five years to spend the two minutes to fix it. Which is about what one would expect from me.

I played a couple of records which sounded good, but about the third or fourth, they began to get stuck. Maybe I have the needle on the wrong side (it’s a needle you can turn for different reasons, one of which I presume is to better work with 78rpm records). Or perhaps I just need to tape a penny on the arm. Time will tell. And, to be honest, it might take another five years to get around to it. Otherwise, I will have to rearrange the living room to better support spending more time in there reading.