Homemade Gramophone / Vinyl Record Player (Phonograph)

From http://www.josepino.com - This is my home-made gramophone using just a plastic cup, a pin and some Lego Mindstorms parts. The pin picks the sound from the vinyl disk and the plastic cup amplifies the sound. A paper cup works fine, a foam cup also works but I didn't like the results.

The plastic cup amplifies the high-frequency tones but not the lower-frequencies, so I did put a napkin inside the cup to reduce the higher frequencies. Using softer materials may help to get lower frequencies amplified.

Details of this homemade phonograph are posted at www.josepino.com/lego_robots

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• gramophone
• phonograph
• vinyl
• acetate
• disk
• old
• music
• lego
• technics
• mindstorms
• robot
• rcx

[chich311]

so is it the record making the noise or is the the mindstorms

[JosePino]

Most of the noise comes from the Mindstorms Gears.

[masterd151]

Woudnt the weight groove the record?

[JosePino]

The arm hold most of the cup weight but the disk will be damaged after 50 times of use. A cactus thorn will solve the problem but the thorn needs to be replaced often.

[wemawa]

Using the pin to play the disc you will degrade the sound quality even with 1 play.

[Richardddoobies]

Your cup is way too heavy ! It will surely shred your new Monkees album! I'm telling Davy Jones. He and Peter Tork are gonna come over and rough you up!

Downward pressure should not exceed 2 grams.

[SnareForLife1995]

Legos? That's epic

[TheHexeract]

This is neat. I'm trying to think of a way to amplify a gramophone horn using a normal vinyl needle. I think the best way would simply be to use a turntables normal preamp output, wire it to a transducer, and attach the transducer to the diaphragm of the horn. Now i just have to find a gramophone horn.

[rowen211]

I hope u that record wasn't valuable

[superproxy75]

8-D~

[superproxy75]

@chich311 so its like thingimadoodle? right? lol!!!

[togrindforya]

the monkess<3 now im a believer

[porkyminch01]

@wemawa Even if they are played correctly whit the proper artifacts the record is always degrading, this form of reproduction only degrades it much more sooner and is propensity to scathing it accidentally is mayor and more critical.

[ObiTrev]

Im still waiting to see someone actually figuring out a way to sense the groove waveform with the NXT sensors, and having a program that can output it to a speaker.

[maxi9060]

thats cool!!!

[dusp2k]

As a vinyl freak this hurts to see.