Chapter 6

Getting Decked Out with Turntables

In This Chapter

Finding out about the basic parts of a turntable

Keeping up to date with new innovations

Caring for your turntables

All turntables are equal in that they play records, but, like most things in life, some are better than others. Whether you’re using turntables to play loads of different records or want to use them in a digital vinyl system to control music playback in software (see Chapter 9), you need a turntable that can cope with the physical demands of DJing. In this chapter, I go through the functions you need to look for when purchasing and setting up turntables.

Avoiding Cheap Turntables

Your decision of what turntable to buy and use is largely based on your budget. When you go shopping, don’t go for the cheapest option so that you can save a little money. Investing in a better quality turntable puts you straight on the road to becoming a quality DJ. Actually, maybe reversing the point makes this clearer: the worse your turntable, the harder it is to become a good DJ. And this advice isn’t aimed at just the beatmatching DJ. If you’re a rock, indie or party DJ and you’re planning to use turntables, it’s just as important to buy quality turntables that won’t skip or create feedback in loud environments.

The main things to watch out for on cheap turntables are that they tend to have belt-driven motors rather than direct-drive motors (see the following section), and they often skimp on essential DJ features such as removable headshells, tonearms with adjustable counterweights and long pitch sliders.

Spend as much money as you can on the turntable – only then think about purchasing the rest of your equipment. Great decks remain great decks no matter what mixer and headphones you use, but not even the best mixer or the clearest headphones can make cheap belt-driven decks better.

Motoring in the right direction

Two different methods are used to make the record turn: direct drive and belt drive. Belt-driven decks may seem like an attractive option when you’re looking to become a DJ, because they’re so much cheaper than their direct-drive big brothers. But don’t be fooled!

Belt-driven turntables

Inside a belt-driven turntable is a small motor with a rubber band linking it to the underside of the platter (the part you put the record on). It’s similar to how turning the front cog with your bike pedals makes the back wheel turn. This design results in low torque (power to the turntable), meaning that the platter often grinds to a halt when you hold the record stopped.

The other downside is that the speed at which the turntable plays can fluctuate, getting faster and slower. If you’re a DJ who’ll be trying to beatmatch the bass beats of two different records (see Chapter 14), the fluctuation of speed makes this, for anything over ten seconds, extremely difficult. You may blame your own skills rather than realising it’s the turntable’s fault.

Direct-drive turntables

Where belt-driven turntables have a rubber band transferring power from the motor to the platter, which then spins around a centre spindle, in direct-drive turntables the centre spindle is attached directly to the motor.

The improved torque that this results in means start-up times of well under half a second, and the power from the motor is more than enough to keep the platter spinning under the slipmat as you hold it still when preparing to start a tune or performing complicated scratches.

The turntable speed is solid and reliable on a direct-drive turntable. Although you can get pitch wobbles around the zero pitch mark, you can be confident that any beatmatching errors are your errors, not the fault of a weak transfer of power through a rubber band.

Watching out for pitch control design

The pitch control on a turntable controls how fast the music plays. Watch out for cheap turntables that use a small (2-inch/5-centimetre) pitch fader or rotary knob to adjust the pitch of the record. You won’t often find either on direct-drive decks, but super-cheap belt-driven decks sometimes have them. These pitch faders are too small to make the fine adjustments you need to keep the beats of your records playing in time, and this can make beatmatching insanely difficult.

Look at the standard design of a turntable (the Technics 1210 in Figure 6-1) and notice the large pitch control down the side of the deck that lets you make precise adjustments to the pitch. Make sure that the turntable you buy is based on a similar design.

Identifying Key Turntable Features

A DJ turntable has many key features. Some of the functions are similar to those of a home hi-fi system’s record player, but added functionality to these controls and designs is what truly separates a DJ turntable. This section covers what these features do, so that you not only buy the correct turntables but also know how to make use of them.

Start/stop

Automatic hi-fi record players start playing when you place the needle on the record, and only stop turning when you take the needle off and replace the arm on the rest, or when the needle gets to the end of the record and automatically returns to the rest.

This isn’t helpful for the DJ: you need manual control of how the motor starts and stops. You sometimes need to stop the turntable but still leave the needle at a specific place on the record. This is usually when you’ve taken time to find the place to start the record from (the cue point) but don’t want to start the tune for a couple of minutes. The start/stop button gives full control over how and when the turntable starts and stops. Pressing stop when the record is playing can be a great DJ technique, too (see Chapter 16).

On/off

The on/off switch on a DJ turntable is normally on the bottom-left corner of the deck, next to the start/stop button. The switch is raised above the platter, and a strobe light is positioned underneath. Although the switch is used mostly for the mundane task of turning the turntable on and off, you can also use the switch creatively in the mix (see Chapter 16).

Strobe light

The strobe light is the soft red light at the side of the turntable (normally bottom-left corner). It’s not just a pretty red light – it’s a strobe light that you use to calibrate and check the accuracy of the turntable’s motor, as I describe in detail in Chapter 3.

Platters

The platter is the part of the turntable that spins around, and is what the slipmat and the record sit on. Home hi-fis have a rubber mat firmly glued onto the platter, which is useless for DJing with, because the platter needs to be made of smooth metal to let the slipmat slip. (See Chapter 7 for what a slipmat is and how to make it slip better.)

When you buy Technics decks they come with a thick rubber mat sitting on top of the platter, which fortunately isn’t glued down. If your decks come with a similar thick rubber mat on top of the metal platter, simply lift it off, exposing the platter, and keep the rubber mat somewhere safe. I find down the back of the wardrobe is a safe enough place.

33/45/78 rpm

Nothing’s particularly special about the rpm (revolutions per minute) button on your DJ deck; when you press 33 and the pitch control is set to zero, the record makes 33 revolutions in one minute, and when at 45, the record revolves 45 times in one minute. If you don’t know what speed you should set your turntable to, look at the record label or cover, which tells you whether to play it at 33 or 45 rpm. Or simply try listening to the record. If you’re playing Barry White and it sounds like the Chipmunks, you’re playing the record too fast; try pressing the 33 button!

If you have older records set to play at 78 rpm, some turntables have a sneaky hidden setting: when you press the 33 and 45 buttons together, the turntable plays at 78 rpm. If you need this feature, check that the turntables you’re looking to buy have it before parting with your money.

Target light

The target light (shown in Figure 6-2) sits to the side of the platter and shines a light along the grooves of the record where the needle traces. Why do you want one? Apart from letting you see where the needle is (or where you’d like to put it), the target light helps you locate different parts of a tune. If you take a look at a record under good light, you can see groups of different shaded rings on the record. These rings are the map of the tune: the darker rings are the quieter parts and the lighter rings are the louder parts. Being able to see where the needle is in the record can help you work out when new parts are about to kick in, helping with perfect mix placement (see Chapter 16).

Like your health, you don’t really think about this pop-up target light until you don’t have it. If the target light is broken or the decks you have don’t come with one, it can be hard to see the rings in a well-lit room let alone in a dark DJ booth.

Pitch control

The pitch control adjusts the rate at which the turntable turns. If you move the pitch control into the + area (towards you on a standard DJ turntable), the record plays faster; if you move the pitch control towards the – area (away from you), the record plays slower. Different turntables have different ranges, but you typically find that pitch adjustment ranges are between 8 or 12 per cent in either direction.

Although the record plays faster the more you increase the pitch control, it’s called a pitch control not a speed control, so the more you increase the speed, the higher the pitch of the music. So you may start to beatmatch two tunes you think will sound great together, but when you increase the pitch of one of the tunes, the two tunes may sound out of tune, like your dad singing in the shower along with the radio. See the section ‘Master Tempo/Key Lock’ later in the chapter for one way around this issue (and take the batteries out of the radio to stop your dad singing in the shower).

Numbers

The numbers on the pitch control can be confusing. These numbers don’t refer to the bpm (beats per minute; the usual measurement of tempo) of the music you’re playing, but rather a percentage difference of the speed of the turntable. The only time the numbers correlate exactly with the bpm is if the tune you’re playing has a bpm of 100. If you move the control to +1, you increase the pitch by 1 per cent of 100, which is 1 bpm; and the same for the other numbers (5 per cent would be 5 bpm and so on).

If you’re playing a 150-bpm tune and decrease the pitch to –1 per cent, then the tune now plays at 148.5 bpm (1 per cent of 150 is 1.5). A 130-bpm tune with the pitch set to +5.5 per cent increases by 7.15 bpm – so you can assume that tune now plays ‘around’ 137 bpm and adjust the pitch on other tunes so they play at the same speed, too.

Unfortunately, using the pitch control isn’t an exact science. The difference that even 1 millimetre of change can make to the speed of your record is enough to throw off your beatmatching. Even though the fader sits somewhere near 2 per cent, you may actually be playing at 2.2 per cent, and that 0.2 per cent can make a huge dent in your beatmatching skills. So use your ears and listen to what the beat is doing instead of relying on the numbers on the pitch control.

For more about how calculating bpm can help with beatmatching, check out Chapter 14. The Cheat Sheet at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/djinguk has the mathematical calculation for working out bpm percentage changes.

Accuracy

The other problem with the pitch control is that through time its accuracy starts to shift, so, for example, when you set the pitch to 4.5 per cent, the turntable may actually only be running at 4 per cent. But even worse is the area around the zero pitch mark on the turntable (what I like to call the ‘Bermuda pitch zone’, because it’s easy to get lost in there for days!). On problem decks, when you set the pitch control to zero, the control clicks into place. When you move the pitch control away from this zero pitch point, the motor sometimes has trouble knowing which way you’re moving the pitch control, and can do the opposite of where you’re setting it, or sometimes belligerently remains at zero pitch for a short distance either side of the zero pitch click point.

Counterweight/height adjust

The counterweight is a metal weight on the back of the tonearm, which, when turned anticlockwise to add weight, increases the down pressure of the needle on the record, making the tonearm less likely to skip when you’re moving the record back and forth, either to find the start point of a record (the cue) or when scratching. You can find detailed information on calibrating and using the counterweight properly in the later ‘Counterweight’ section.

The higher you set the tonearm, the steeper the angle at which the needle points down into the groove, exerting even more down force and making it even less likely to skip. A lot of scratch DJs adopt this setting to give increased needle stability. Be careful, though: if you’ve set your tonearm height to the top and the counterweight is on at full, you’ll wear out your records and your needles really fast.

You may have read about or heard of DJs who like to put the counterweight on back to front to get a little more down pressure onto the needle; this action is very bad for your needle and your records, damaging and wearing them out really quickly. For the scratch DJ who accepts accelerated wear as one of the consequences of scratching, this is fine. But as a beatmatching, mixing DJ, never put on more weight than the needle manufacturer suggests. If you need to add that much weight, chances are your technique is wrong, your needles are already damaged or dirty, or you’re using the wrong needle altogether. (Chapter 7 covers these issues.)

Anti-skate

When a record plays forwards, a centripetal force pulls the needle in the groove towards the centre of the record. Anti-skate cancels out this pull by adding an equal force that pulls the needle out towards the outer edge of the record, keeping the needle in the middle of the groove with no sideways force to wear out the walls of the groove.

Although anti-skate helps to keep the home listener’s vinyl copies of Mozart in pristine condition, the function can be redundant when DJing, because you don’t only play the record forwards; between scratching and back cueing, you also do your fair share of playing the tune backwards. When you play a record backwards, the force that normally pulls the needle into the centre of the record when playing forwards is now pulling the needle out towards the edge of the record (it’s become a centrifugal force). If an anti-skate setting is already pulling the record out to the edge, more force than normal is acting on the needle, making it even more likely to jump out of the groove. All this really means is that most DJs tend to leave anti-skate set to zero.

Removable headshell/cartridge

The needle you use is very important, depending on the style of DJing you do. DJs who want to scratch need to set up their needles for maximum stability, and beatmatching DJs need to ensure that they get the best sound and versatility from their needles and cartridges. The ability to adjust the angle at which the needle points into the groove or change the entire headshell from (for example) a standard Technics design to an all-in-one Concorde design are important factors for achieving individual DJs’ requirements. These adjustments separate the DJ turntable from the home hi-fi record player, which typically doesn’t allow this kind of customisation.

From a practical point of view, removable headshells can be a life-saver if you damage a needle during a set in a club. If something happens to the needle on the turntable and you have a spare headshell to hand, instead of fiddling around trying to remove the needle from the cartridge to replace it in a dark, loud DJ booth while under pressure to get the next tune ready to mix in, you can whip off the headshell containing the damaged needle and screw on a new one, all within five seconds. For more information about needles and cartridges, head to Chapter 7.

45 rpm adaptor

Now relegated to a recess in the top-left corner of the turntable, this shiny piece of metal has become (virtually) obsolete due to the demise of traditional jukebox records. However, if you play older records (ska or northern soul stuff especially), or newer reggae/ragga 7-inch singles, you’ll find that you may still need to use this adaptor on some of those records.

Customising Your Sound with Advanced Turntable Features

The basic features on a turntable enable you to play a record and change the speed it plays at. For most DJs, that’s more than enough. But for some, gadgets, buttons and switches all go hand in hand with creativity and individuality, so they look to turntables with enhanced features.

When you look at the gadgets and controls on your turntables, just bear one thing in mind: where are you going to be DJing? If you only ever intend to make mix CDs and run your own parties using your own equipment, then feel free to go nuts, but if you’re planning on playing in clubs, have a quick think about how much you use these add-ons and the likelihood of them being available on the clubs’ setups.

This argument is similar to the one about relying on beat counters to develop your beatmatching skills (see Chapter 10). The advanced functions such as reverse play, quartz lock, digital displays and pitch bend/controls with 50 per cent variance are all useful, adding a nice dimension to your mixes when at home, but because 97 per cent of clubs still use Technics 1210s (with nothing more than a pitch control that’s a bit wonky around zero pitch and an otherwise rock-steady motor), ask yourself whether your advanced turntable DJ skills will travel well to these clubs. If you can only mix well on advanced turntables, you’re in for a tough time when you can’t use any.

I’m not saying don’t get turntables with advanced features on them. I’m not even going to lie and say that you’ll never work in a club that has decks with these features, but in the same vein as with beat counters, don’t rely on these advanced features to make you a good DJ.

Pitch range options

Once upon a time, your choice of pitch range was limited to 8 per cent faster or slower (unless you opened up the turntable and started screwing around with its innards); that was when Technics 1200/1210s ruled the roost. But things have moved on. Now 12 per cent pitch variance has become a standard on many turntables, but advances in pitch control mean that the DJ can have 50 per cent pitch variance on offer, or more!

You aren’t likely to play a tune at 50 per cent that often, but you’re certain to want to play a tune faster than 8 per cent. Some scratch, funk and drum-and-bass DJs like to over-pitch their tunes, making them sound completely different. (Try to steer away from using tunes with vocals when you do this, though, because it will sound like the vocalist has been inhaling helium!)

Sliding the pitch control up or down to 50 per cent at the end of a tune is a good technique to use (sparingly) to get from one tune to another, but large pitch ranges are more about offering the DJ another level of creativity than about everyday use.

Pitch bend and joystick control

Pitch bend was first introduced on CD decks. When beatmatching, if the beats start to slip out of time, instead of temporarily speeding up or slowing down the turntable by pushing the record, spinning the spindle, touching the side of the deck or briefly boosting/cutting the pitch fader setting by 4 or 5 per cent, you get two buttons on the turntable, or a joystick, which control small bursts of speed. When you use the + or – pitch bend buttons or controls, the turntable speeds up or slows down by a small amount. When you release the buttons, the deck returns to the original speed setting.

CD DJs welcome these controls when they first use vinyl. You still need to set the pitch control and start the record at the right time, but if you’re more familiar using buttons to correct the speed of CDs, the concept and the technique of using the turntable’s pitch bend is the same, making the migration from CD to vinyl that bit easier for the CD DJ.

Predictability

The knack of adjusting the speed of the record with your hands is something that you pick up after a few hours, but sometimes you come across a record that feels stiff to move or flies away too fast and turns a lot faster than you thought, almost spinning out of control as you try to speed it up. The constant, predictable change that you always have to hand as you press the pitch bend buttons, no matter what record you use, can make beatmatching easier.

Cleaner records

Pitch bend is also a good alternative to pushing or slowing down the tune with your fingers, because it protects your records from excessive fingerprints and grime. As a DJ, you’re actively encouraged to touch your records, but a method that keeps your records as clean as possible is still a good thing.

When you’re considering buying turntables with pitch bend, try to see the feature in action first. Some turntables have a really clumsy control over the speed boost/lag, and can zip up the speed of your tune by too much, too fast, sometimes rendering the control pointless, because you can never make small enough adjustments to get the bass beats back in time.

Tempo reset/quartz lock

Earlier in this chapter, I describe the ‘Bermuda pitch zone’, which is where the pitch control goes a little wonky through the zero pitch range on turntables that click into place when set to zero. To get around this problem, turntable manufacturers started to make turntables with clickless pitch faders that glide through the zero pitch area, moving smoothly all the way through the entire pitch range. The problem with a clickless fader, though, is that you can’t be sure when you’re at exactly zero pitch any more. Some turntables still show a green light as you pass zero, but a better option is the quartz lock or tempo reset button, which resets the pitch to zero pitch, no matter where you set the pitch control.

Some people use this quartz lock almost like a pitch bend when the record is playing too fast. Hit the button once to slow the tune down temporarily and again to bring the tune back to the speed you set it at. This technique is a bit hit and miss though, and not as accurate as a pitch bend or using your hands.

Master tempo/key lock

Master tempo – first available as an add-on to turntables by a company called Vinyl Touch, then available on Pioneer CD decks and now an option on a number of advanced digital turntables – enables you to change the speed of a tune, but not its pitch. It’s a mainstay of digital DJing software, but a lot rarer on turntables.

The pitch control isn’t just a speed control. As you increase or decrease the pitch control, the pitch of the music gets higher or lower as a consequence of the tune playing faster or slower. Pressing the master tempo button means that you can change only the speed, leaving the pitch of the music the same.

Some decks take this a stage further, like with the key lock on the Numark TTX1 turntables. You can use the pitch control to select whatever music pitch you want the tune to play at, press the key lock button and then adjust the tempo while retaining your pitch setting. Check out the info on harmonic mixing in Chapter 16 for more.

These controls can be quite temperamental – not just on turntables, but with CD decks and software too. If the pitch setting is more than 4 or 5 per cent and you activate master tempo or key lock, you can sometimes add digital noise to the music, making the track sound as if it’s playing underwater. Tunes with strong vocals tend to suffer the worst from this problem, whereas simple musical tracks can withstand quite a large change.

You won’t find any hard and fast rules for using the master tempo and key lock features, so you simply need to keep experimenting to work out how far you can push each of your tunes.

Digital display of pitch

The pitch control is an essential tool on a turntable, but its analogue nature means that you can’t be 100 per cent sure that when you set the pitch to 3.5 per cent, it’s actually changed by 3.5 per cent. A digital display on the turntable shows you exactly where you’ve set the pitch and whether you’ve adjusted the pitch by a small enough amount to make the beats play in time. This info helps you mix with confidence, taking away some of the guesswork that comes with analogue pitch controls.

Adjustable brake for start/stop

Traditionally, when you press stop on the turntable, the record stops in about half a second. Some decks enable you to adjust the brake, which changes the time that the record takes to stop, giving you more control if you decide to use stop as a mixing technique (see Chapter 16).

A quick stop is really nice, but prolonging that to one bar of music (which equals four beats) can add another dimension to the mix, or you can set a really long brake time and emulate a power-off, as describe in Chapter 16.

In some instances, you can tighten the brake up so much that when you press stop the record plays backwards!

Reverse play

Instead of adjusting the brake to make the turntable play backwards on advanced turntables, sometimes turntables have a handy little button (often located next to the pitch control) that does exactly the same thing. Simply press the reverse button and the deck plays backwards. You get a slow-down-to-stop and start-up delay as you do this operation, but if your timing’s right when pressing this button, it sounds great.

Some CD decks give you the option of instantly reversing the direction of the music, rather than needing to account for this delay as the record changes direction. See Chapter 8 for information on DJing with CDs.

Different shaped tonearms

For years, the standard shape of the tonearm on a turntable was an S. The S shape creates a variety of different forces on the needle as it’s pulled into the centre of the record: a tracking force, an inside force and a vertical force. With so many different forces, you can understand why the needle might jump out of the groove when scratching.

In the late ’90s, Vestax pioneered the ASTS straight tonearm for DJs, which only has a tracking force affecting the needle. Some of the lateral forces are cancelled out, so the needle achieves maximum stability and is less likely to skip out of the groove when you’re in the middle of a complicated scratch move.

The straight tonearm isn’t aimed only at the scratch DJ, though. The reduction in forces acting on the needle in the groove means that you get a lot less wear on the vinyl, so your records last and sound good for much longer.

A lot of turntables come with only an S-shape or only a straight tonearm, but some decks from companies such as Numark now include both styles in an interchangeable format, so you can change the design of tonearm as often as you change your socks.

Removable cabling

For years, turntables came with the RCA cables (you may know them as phono cables) hard-wired into the electronic gubbins inside the casing. Any damage to the cables meant opening up the casing and re-soldering the connections (if possible) or sending your precious turntable off for repair.

When equipment manufacturers realised that this was problematic for DJs, they started to make turntables with RCA plugs on the back, just like the inputs on the mixer. With these turntables, all you need is a standard twin RCA cable that you plug between the turntable and the mixer, and if anything happens to damage the cables they’re easy to replace.

Digital outputs

As well as addressing the mechanics of the cabling on the back of the turntable, manufacturers also looked at the range and quality of output connections they offer to the technology-driven DJ. Not content with the analogue signal sent through the RCA outputs, digital outputs such as USB and S/PDIF (which I describe in more detail in Chapter 13) are now on offer for you to connect turntables to a mixer or PC with a similar input.

Battle or club design

Look into the history of DJing and you see that club DJs have the turntables positioned as per the manufacturers’ expectations, but scratch DJs turn them around 90 degrees anticlockwise. This is so that the needle is clear of their hands as they move like lightning from deck to mixer to the other deck and back again, all in the blink of an eye. The downside to this orientation is that the power control, pitch control and start/stop button (all of which scratch DJs love to use) are now awkwardly placed.

Companies such as Numark and Vestax saw a gap in the turntable market and designed turntables with start/stop switches at both corners and pitch faders that you move from one side of the deck to the other, making it more comfortable for the scratch DJ to use the decks.

If you’re a beatmatching DJ with no interest in scratching, turning up to a club that has the turntables set up with this ‘vertical alignment’ for scratch DJs can be extremely annoying. It’s not as easy to access the pitch control, it’s a bit harder to take the needle on and off the record and it simply isn’t as comfortable to beatmatch with the turntables set up like this. Some time spent using turntables with this orientation soon gets you over this hurdle, so when you research a venue where you’re due to play, be sure to look at how the turntables are positioned and put in any required practice at home with this setup if need be. (Check out Chapter 21 for more about playing live.)

MIDI controls

Digital DJing may have made a dent in the turntable market, but that hasn’t stopped companies like Reloop redesigning the turntable to make it more functional when controlling DJ software. With a set of MIDI programmable buttons down the side of the turntable, the RP-8000 adds more tactile control to a digital vinyl system (see Figure 6-3). Chapter 9 has more about digital DJing.

Setting Up Turntables

The various features I describe in this chapter can make turntables appear to be complicated creatures if you know nothing about them. Whether you’re using your turntables to play loads of different records or just the same two over and over again on a digital vinyl system (see Chapter 9), you need to set up three different elements before use:

• Platter
• Tonearm
• Peripherals

Platter

If you’re using direct-drive turntables, all you have to do is make sure that you’ve removed the thick rubber mat that may have come with the turntable and then place the slipmat directly on top of the platter – and the record sits on top of the slipmat.

If you’ve just bought brand-new belt-driven turntables, you may find that the belt hasn’t been linked between the motor and the platter. Carefully lift off the platter and look underneath; if the belt isn’t linked to the motor, it’s probably taped to the underside of the platter. Stretch the belt between the motor’s capstan (the bit of the motor that turns) and the underside of the platter. If in doubt, check the manual for instructions!

Tonearm

The tonearm holds the needle. If you set up the tonearm poorly, the needle can jump out of the groove when you’re trying to find the cue point (see Chapter 14). Worse than that, though, a poorly set up tonearm can permanently damage the needle and your records.

The tonearm may require adjustment to two different aspects:

• Counterweight
• Height

Counterweight

The counterweight is a weight on the back of the tonearm that controls how much down force the tonearm applies to the needle to keep it in the groove. The amount to add is suggested by the manufacturer of the needles and cartridges that you’re using. (Chapter 7 tells you more about needles and cartridges, and has a table of common counterweight settings.)

The key to achieving your desired setting begins with floating the tonearm. (Figure 6-4 shows the correct floating position; notice how the tonearm is completely parallel to the platter, pointing neither up nor down.)

To float your tonearm, follow these steps:

1. Remove any records from the turntable.
2. Starting on one of the turntables, carefully lift the tonearm off its rest towards the middle of the platter.
3. While holding the headshell to keep the needle from crashing down onto the slipmat, turn the counterweight clockwise with your other hand so that it starts to move towards the back end of the tonearm.
4. As you move the weight backwards, frequently check to see whether a shift in weight has caused the tonearm to point up instead of down.
5. When the tonearm starts to point up, turn the counterweight anticlockwise by a small amount in order to find the setting where the needle floats in mid air, as shown in Figure 6-4.
6. After you’ve found this floating point, return the tonearm to its rest and use the tonearm clamp to lock it into place.
7. Now hold the silver part of the counterweight and use two fingers to grip the black ring on the front of the weight. The ring, which has numbers on it, turns independently to the rest of the counterweight.
8. Turn only the black ring until the line pointing down from the number zero lines up with the line on the tonearm beneath it. Figure 6-5 shows you how to control the black ring.

The tonearm is now set to the floating position and has been zeroed. If your needle manufacturer suggests that you add 3 grams of counterweight onto the tonearm, turn the entire counterweight (so the black ring also turns) anticlockwise until the number 3 on the black ring lines up with the mark below it on the tonearm.

Height

The height adjustment on most decks is a ring at the bottom of the tonearm assembly that raises or lowers the tonearm as it turns clockwise or anticlockwise. A small mark on the assembly shows you how much height you’ve added, and unless you’re a scratch DJ who uses a raised tonearm height to add even more down force to the needle, your best bet is to follow the height suggested by the makers of the needle and cartridge you’re using.

When you’re altering the height of the tonearm, leave it in the tonearm rest with the clamp on to hold it in place. Otherwise, one wrong move and the needle may bounce across the record/slipmat/platter.

Look out for the lock switch on the tonearm – without releasing this lock, you can’t change the height, and if you try to force the ring, thinking it’s stuck, you may do permanent damage to the tonearm assembly.

Peripherals

The last items to attend to when setting up your turntables are the feet and the lids. Keeping the lids attached to the turntables when you’re mixing is a bad idea; they get in the way and you may knock them, causing the needle to jump. Don’t be lazy: take them on and off each time you use your decks.

The rubber feet on your turntables don’t act as mere vibration dampeners. Because the feet screw in, adjusting how tightly they’re attached affects the height of each of the four corners of the turntable, which is ideal when compensating for the badly built DIY furniture that your decks sit on. Grab a spirit level if you want to be precise and adjust the feet to make sure that your decks are level. If they’re not level, the needles may skip.

Servicing Your Turntables

Make your turntables last as long as possible by showing them a little bit of care and attention from time to time. You can find information all over the Internet for fixing various broken parts on your decks, but a little cleaning and lubrication can keep the gremlins at bay.

As a general rule for all your equipment, when you’re not using it, keep it covered. If your turntables have plastic lids, put those back on when you’re not using the turntables. If you keep the decks in flight cases, put the lid back on. If you have neither of these, put a soft, lint-free sheet over the decks when they’re not in use, to catch any dust before it gets a chance to settle on your faders, motor and tonearm.

To care for your turntables:

• Motor: If you keep the motor properly lubricated, it can run smoothly for years. All you need to do is remove the platter and put a small drop of sewing machine oil on the centre spindle. Use lubricating oil such as sewing machine oil rather than covering the entire insides of your deck with a slobbering of WD-40 spray!

  After you’ve lubricated the motor, replace the platter and spin it around with your hand. You can use the turntable immediately as long as you didn’t pour half a can of oil all over the inner workings of the deck.

• Tonearm: You need a can of compressed air and a can of degreasing lubricant to thoroughly clean and lubricate the tonearm assembly. (The degreaser dissolves any dirt you can’t clean by hand or air alone; make sure to pick one that’s a lubricant, too, otherwise things may seize!) Don’t worry if you think these sprays are too expensive just for cleaning a tonearm, as you’re also going to need them for your mixer (see Chapter 10).

  Cover the rest of your equipment with a sheet you don’t mind getting dusty and then spray the tonearm assembly with the compressed air to remove any surface dust (the sheet is so you don’t just move the dust from one deck to another). Spray the grease dissolver over the bearings in the tonearm to remove any ground-in dirt and keep them lubricated.

• Pitch fader: Use the compressed air to blow any dirt out of the pitch fader. Use the cleaning lubricant to dissolve any dirt residue in the fader if you think you have a problem, but using the compressed air is usually adequate to clean the fader.
• Headshell: If you ever suffer from signal dropout from the cartridge (which is when the music starts to break up and cut out), use a pencil or a pin to clean any dirt off the contacts. I’ve heard of DJs licking the contact points on the headshell and the cartridge to try to clean off any dirt, but as well as being disgusting, your saliva (mixed with anything you’ve been drinking) ends up damaging the contacts in the long run.

  Check that the screws holding the cartridge are tight, the needle is clean of any dirt build-up and that it sits securely inside the cartridge.

• Under the platter: If your turntable comes with a removable platter, lift it off and wipe around the underside with a lint-free cloth, and make sure to pick up any dust or dirt that was trapped underneath. Using the spray can of air may be a bad idea, because you can blow the dust farther inside the deck chassis. Although a little dirt may not cause a problem with the electronics, it’s not a good idea to keep forcing more and more dust than normal inside the turntable.