Some time ago I downloaded the strobe template from vinylengine to check my turntable speed and set it by sticking 9 layers of Sellotape on to my driven wheel (Systemdek II).
Even so, I noticed that the lengths of the recorded tracks rarely matched the lengths noted on the vinyls. So I set up an experiment to check it. I bluetacked the head of a soft watercolour brush to the outer edge of my turntable, aligning it so that it just brushed the side of the needle cantilever.
I then recorded the resulting spikes for over 10 minutes. I selected exactly 10 minutes of the resulting file and counted the intervals between spikes. I should have had 333 and one third intervals. I had 333.139.
That is out by 0.0194 intervals, or 0.194 x 1.8 secs = 0.349 secs.
So I was losing one second in 10/0.349 mins = 28.6 mins.
That's close enough for me. The moral of this story is ‘trust the strobe’.
PS just made a linear tracking arm that works a treat, unfortunately can't share it with you as it's a patented design.
