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Running old turntable through receiver w/ RCA jacks


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Hello there,

 

I just got an old turntable with only four jacks for speaker wires... those thick wires where each speaker has a positive wire and a negative wire... and I want to run it trough a receiver with RCA inputs so I can adjust the bass/treble and hook up two pairs of speakers. I've been toiling over Google and having a surprisingly difficult time finding any information on this.

 

Yesterday I went to a thrift store and bought a pair of small speakers with RCA cables on them, removed the cables from the speakers, stripped them and plugged them into the turntable and ran them to the receiver. The sounds is atrocious, probably owing to the fact that these cables are extremely thin and not made for this purpose... Is there any way to make an RCA cable, or buy one, or am I out of luck?

 

Thanks.

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What kind of table is it (maybe post make/model)? If it has it's own amplification built in and the four jacks are really speaker jacks, then you should never connect that to any RCA inputs on your receiver. So you can either connect speakers directly to the table, or look if there's a line level output (perhaps a headphone output, those were pretty common on those table/amp combo systems). Posting some pictures would be a great help as well.

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Yeah, that will do it. But I have to be honest, there's very little chance that it will sound any better than what you've experienced before. Even if it still works perfectly fine, that table is right there with today's crosleys and other lowest end all-plastic tables.

 

Can you elaborate? Do you mean it won't sound any better than CD/MP3? You just mean the sound quality is bad?

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Probably the latter. That system originally had Panasonic speakers that were made to work with it, and wasn't really made to be used with other speakers, power-rating wise. That, and it's probably just a cheap pre-amp built into it in general. That isn't to mention whatever stylus is on that thing is probably nothing to write home about as well.

I use the word probably because I've never heard the system personally, but I agree with slinch that in just looking at it, it's the old school equivalent of a plastic crosley or ion.

Comparing it to CD/MP3s played on what? That same system? Yeah the TT will probably sound worse...

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Can you elaborate? Do you mean it won't sound any better than CD/MP3? You just mean the sound quality is bad?

 

I mean it won't sound much better than this:

 

Yesterday I went to a thrift store and bought a pair of small speakers with RCA cables on them, removed the cables from the speakers, stripped them and plugged them into the turntable and ran them to the receiver. The sounds is atrocious, probably owing to the fact that these cables are extremely thin

 

It's not the cables that are responsible for the horrible sound.

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What I meant by "atrocious" sound was that it was extremely distorted when I ran cables from the speaker output to the receiver input. The turntable sounds great (by my standards) when speakers are plugged into it. I want to run it into a receiver so I can adjust the levels and have two pairs of speakers in separate rooms. I'm sure I could get a better one but it's a $ issue at the moment. The thing cost me $15.

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Oh right, I forgot Internet forums are full of bloated egos who communicate in nothing but sarcasm...

 

I'm sure I can learn about this through my sheer coolness, like you guys did. Maybe I can get people to pay me to be a prick to strangers on the Internet and I'll get that $5000 turntable in no time.

 

Thanks guys!

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Way to go, VC. Another kid got upset after less than 10 posts.

 

But seriously dude, nothing here warranted that kind of response. You got answers to all of your questions as well as some advice on where to go from there. It's a pretty nice community if you decide to stick around, but maybe ease up the dramatic overreacting, it's quite unbecoming. 

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