Creative Crafty #7: Repairing Vinyl Memories

For those that truly know me, know I am a huge sucker for old things! The history that they hold and the different people that have came in contact with them holds such high sentimental value for me. For example most recently I missed listening to vinyl records like I used to do with my dad when I was little. To soothe my soul  I asked my parents for a spare record player they might have when I went home. My dad pulled out his, from the 70's old, record player that had been residing in our garage for just about 15 years.

I was so excited to bring it home even though I did not have the speakers for it and was determined to find a solution for this problem. As my ADHD is terrible sometimes, I of course became distracted and had simply set it aside. This was until one of my best friends from home came to visit! Her and I have built our fair share of frank-inventions, including a TV antenna, over the years so we decided this would be our project for the weekend. 

After first going to Best Buy in an attempt to find the appropriate cord that would allow me to plug my computer speakers into the record player, we found ourselves at Radioshack. Unfortunately, I had not looked close enough at the record player and had the wrong information. After the second trip to Radioshack we found the correct cord configuration and hooked up the speakers just to find that the turn table or platter wouldn't even spin now. 

This was the problem why the platter didn't spin.

This gave me a excellent reason to pull my tool box out of the closet and to slowly take apart the record player to better diagnose what was wrong. We slowly took off the back and different components apart in an attempt to reach the primary source of our issue. The two of us being the organized, sligtly OCD, minds that we are carefully placed the pieces aside including the screws and labeled them with sticky notes. This way there would be no "left over" pieces when putting the whole machine back together. 

Everything neatly labeled! 

One late night shopping trip to Walmart later, we greased the parts that needed greasing, and un-greased the parts that we had greased and realized we shouldn't. Excitedly put it all back together set it up and turned it on. Buttt, instead of happy pleasant music we heard demon devil music coming form the speakers... The platter was now dipping as it spun causing the record to catch  and slow. At this point it was almost 1 am and even though  we had a better understanding of how a vinyl record player worked, we decided to retire our repair hats for a couple beers on the couch.  

~A shout out to one of my best friend Michelle!!! Love you girl!~

**Update** 

This record player still sits on my dining room table waiting to be completely repaired. I have returned home once again and now have another old portable record player that works perfect ! Frank Sinatra and Vinyl Records shall live forever! :)