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Old 25th Apr 2019, 11:55 pm   #1
unitelex
Hexode
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 492
Default Mrs Spittal's jumping records

This is a true story from 1979.
As a lad of 16 I was working Saturdays at a high street chemist which also sold budget audio equipment, LPs Singles etc.
One Saturday the store manager, knowing I had some knack for diagnosing problems, came to me with a request. He had an elderly customer who had bought a new stereo record player to replace her previous player because it was skipping. She had been returning to the store regularly to complain that the new machine was also "jumping" as she put it. She had also returned on several occasions to return and complain about LP's she had bought that - you guessed it - were jumping. She had been offered a 2nd new machine but refused and wanted a service call. The store manager seemed at his wits end, and asked me to visit her house to find out what the problem was. The manager seemed fearful of her and sent me alone. They would not pay for a taxi, it would have cost more than my wage for the day. So I walked the mile or two to her house where I met Mrs Spittal for the first time. I dont recall her being hard of hearing but she did remind me of Mrs Richards (Joan Sanderson) the deaf lady from the Faulty Towers episode.

Mrs Spittal recounted at length about all the jumping problems she was having with the old record player, now the new one. I asked her to show me the problem. She handed me a record from her collection and asked me to put it on. I checked the stylus which looked OK, it was a new machine so wear was not likely. The tracking seemed OK but I lacked equipment to check it precisely. It played OK for a short while, then the jumping started. It was jumping randomly, not once per revolution or at any particular point.
The player was on a sturdy table with no obvious signs of vibration etc.

So I took a very close look at the stylus while this jumping was happening. To my surprise I saw some curls of white debris trailing behind the stylus. I told Mrs Spittal that her record might be dirty and need cleaning. She was most indignant and said that the store manager had already advised her to clean her records which she had apparently done. She took another record from its sleeve to show me and admittedly it did look very shiny indeed.

I asked her how she was cleaning the records. It was when she showed me the wax furniture polish and duster that I realized what was going on.
I asked her if I could try something, I took the record to her kitchen and carefully cleaned the record with detergent, warm water a velvet cloth and dried it with a tissue. After that the record played without the white debris behind the stylus and no jumping at all.

I left her house with several LPs cleaned and drying on her dish rack and imparted some record cleaning tips. She did not have a dishwasher otherwise I would have advised her not to wash her records in it.

I wonder if she survived to the CD era and bought a CD player. Maybe my successor got called to her house one day to solve problems with skipping CD's and advised her to wax polish them...
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