The entry-level 'hi'fi' turntable par excellence. Thousands of these found their way into people's sound systems either as 'separates', or as components built into self-contained audio systems. This one was part of a stereo system that had 'died', and so I harvested it, designed and constructed a plinth for it, fitted a Shure M78S cartridge, and used it as my 78rpm turntable.
This is a single-play, semi-automatic design. It represents a 'halfway house' between the BSR autochanger I featured before (which will play a stack of records) and the Collaro I wrote about (which will spin a disc and do nothing else). The Garrard requires the user to place the stylus on the record, but will pick up the tonearm, return it to its rest and switch the device off. All of this happens at breakneck speed at 78rpm, but these, like the BSRs, are reliable devices.
Features of this turntable include a detachable headshell, for easy swapping between 78 and 33/45rpm cartridges, for example, and a facility for adjusting the stylus tracking weight. It's still working and doing what it was designed for!
I forget if my Dad's was a Collaro or a Garrard but it was certainly very like that one. It did have a lever that lifted and lowered the tone-arm on a quadrant so you didn't do that yourself, though you still had to guide the arm across the quadrant.
I've an idea it also had an auto-return mechanism.
He bought a reel-to-reel tape-recorder too, I think a Collaro, that was driven by mounting it on the turn-table with one reel on the spindle. A small pillar fitted to the side of the deck engaged the side of the unit to prevent the whole lot from revolving.
