Do you still have access to turntables at your station?

[Fieldtech1]

Just curious........Be they in storage or in a production room. I know they are still staples in many a urban stations that feature live mixing.   I'm helping setup a production room that can intake audio from various media including vinyl and it got me to wondering.

[bradgoehl]

I think we may have some in storage, but not hooked up in studios.
My last company had an urban format and they did have some 1200's.

[littlejohn]

We got a mix booth for the hiphop station, two CDJ1000s flanked by a pair of Technics tables.  The kids use them now and again, but infrequently.  They normally have CDs and use the CDJs.

[VelvetR]

At KNOM I've kept three turntables in service.  One in the primary air studio because several evening hosts revive things that exist exclusively on vinyl.  There is also one in each of two production rooms.  One is used occasionally when working on historical features which use snippets from ancient "spoken word" recordings and pieces from some of the old recordings once released by magazines like Reader's Digest.  In the third instance the turntable exists only because it's been there for fifteen years and there's no pressing need for the board input it uses or for the space it occupies.  Perhaps one day I'll sever the cable and put a mini male on board side and a mini female on the turntable/preamp side, leaving them mated.  Then when someone wants to use something off their iPod or similar they'll have a convenient way to do it.

Similarly I keep one Otari reel-to-reel machine in one production room though it's almost never used and the archived tapes it might be used with are fast becoming brittle.

If you already have a turntable but are shy on board inputs consider the plug-in trick described above.  You may never need it but you'll be able to use the turntable quickly if ever it might make the impossible possible.

[bilco]

I have a 1200 out back in storage, mounted on a frame with a preamp ready to be plugged in if needed.  I think the last time it was used was about 4 years ago to do a favor for a client.  He had a great Korean War vintage Air Fforce Officers Club song album on 33 that our production director cleaned up via our audio processing to record to CD.  I still have a copy of that CD in my truck.

[Studio1]

My philosophy (which does extend into the studio) is to have one of everything. That way you can convert any format to any format with relative ease.

There's a Technics SP-15 (plus two in storage as backup/spares), a Tascam 122 MK II for cassette dubs, an Otari CTM-10 to grab audio off old carts, a couple of Otari MX5050 BII machines, a Denon Minidisc recorder and a few other interesting machines.

As yet we're still hunting for a good 8-track 1/2" machine, and that's probably as far as we need to go. 1" and larger formats hardly surface these days and if they do we can send it to a recording studio for transcription.

The units don't take up much space in the studio and with the revival of vinyl I can see the turntable getting more use in the near future.
Once the audio is in the computer, it's easy enough to clean it up and send it through to the on-air if need be, or dump to CD etc.

[mgpt6]

At a college station that I fill -in occasionally , there are 2 Technics turntables in the FM air studio .

[Goran Tomas]

At a college station I help out, there are two Technics 1210 MkIIs with a DJ mixer connected to the Axia iQ console. The turntables are used by the various DJs, both for playing vinyl and for use with laptops and Serato/Traktor software...


Regards,
Goran Tomas

[flakunkel]

At the college station where I volunteer, there are two operational Technics 'tables in the control room.  They are used occasionally.  The station has a huge collection of jazz, classical, blues and bluegrass LP's.

[K6JHU]

A more basic question, does anybody, except the mix shows, still have the ability to segue between turntables?