Daniel Barassi aus LA hat aus den alten Fisher Price Plattenspielern, die einige vielleicht noch aus ihrer Kindheit kennen, DJ-Decks gebaut, die im Grunde all das können, was man als Schallplattenunterhalter so braucht: Fishure-Price.
(Direktlink, via Vinyl of the Day)
After some trial and error, I managed to fit a Shure M44-7 “DJ” cartridge into the tonearm. Wired as proper stereo, the signal goes to four switches. In one position, the switches send the stereo signal to the newly installed RCA jacks in the back. In the other position, the signal is routed – in mono – to a battery operated mini-amplifier. More specifically, the circuit board from a mini-amplifier, which I mounted to the inside of the Fishure-Price.
From there, the mini-amplifier output can travel to either the stock mono speaker, or to a newly installed mono headphone jack.
I bypassed the original power button (located under the tonearm), and moved it to a cluster of switches I installed across from the speed control. From left to right, they are “turntable power”, “mini-amplifier power” (so I could turn off the 9 volt battery of the mini-amp), and the “speaker / headphones” toggle (for quiet digging while using the deck in record stores, monitoring for when I DJ without a mixer, et cetera).
Another huge feature, other than the stereo out (for both hookup to proper stereo systems, as well as for using the Fishure-Price decks with Serato Scratch Live), is the conversion of the original large volume control (next to the speed selector) into a proper pitch control (+/- 6%, according to Scratch Live). A special shout out to Gustav for giving me the idea of the pitch control.
When I first made the decks, Serato didn’t have 7″ control vinyl. Luckily, A-Trak released his latest (at the time) 7″ single with a Serato tone on the b-side! I actually prefer the A-Trak discs, not only for the clear vinyl (so you can see the custom Fishure-Price slipmats), but also because they spin at 45rpm. The “proper” Serato 7″ control discs run at 33rpm (boo!).
