I think it’s just an adapter because the holes are different size, so this goes in the larger hole to fit the spindle. I’ve never used a record either though so…
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Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 days agoI’m just wondering how it works. I know there are different sizes, and thus different speeds that the record needs to spin at but all the turntables I’ve ever used had a switch for the two most common sizes. I have to assume this is for slowing/speeding up how fast it turns on a table without an adjustable speed, but I can’t quite intuit how that would work.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 5 days ago
aMockTie@lemmy.world 5 days ago
The adapter does not affect the speed of the turntable, and you would still need to flip the switch on the record player to 45 RPM. These physically smaller (7") records were commonly referred to as singles because they would hold a single song per side.
The larger (12") 33 1/3 RPM records had a smaller spindle than 45s, which meant you would need to use an adapter like the one pictured to play a 45, as demonstrated in the video shared by @thermal_shock@lemmy.world.
Since 33s were physically larger and played at a slower speed, you could fit much more music on each side of the disc. That’s why those discs would be used for entire albums, and were also commonly referred to as LPs (Long Plays).
Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 days ago
Huh. I guess I just never saw the different sizes having a different sized spindle hole. My dad has a collection of records, and there are two different sizes of records among them, but they all have the same sized hole in the center. However, none of them appear to be 45s. They’re all 10’s or 12’s.
aMockTie@lemmy.world 5 days ago
That’s awesome, you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000.
It supposedly had something to do with calculus and the ratio between the diameter of the inner most groove to the diameter of the outermost groove being optimal at that size, but I’m not sure how much of that is genuine or just marketing. I’ve also heard that the larger hole is better for the mechanisms in jukeboxes.