Fidelity record player.

[Geordie McBoyne]

To be honest I do not like this sort of record player. Just one audio amplifying valve, but worst of all is a non isolated power supply.
First of the nasties is the fact that one of the pickup wires goes directly to the chassis which in turn is connected to one side of the mains supply.  I will add an isolating capacitor (C1 0.01mfd) as in the circuit of the Ferguson 3014 record player.
A new mains lead with a moulded plug is called for, the existing cable has no colour coding whatsoever! Bad form.
The original TC8 type of pickup will have to go, to be replaced by a X5H.

Geordie McBoyne.

[AlanBeckett]

I'm afraid it was perfectly normal back day

Alan

[tiv48]

And to be fair i never heard of anyone dying from using one.
Rob T

[Geordie McBoyne]

That's right, there was often scant regard to safety in those times.   Saying that, I have never heard of anyone being injured by these record players.     Nevertheless, I will implement some modifications to improve safety. One will be the addition of a fuse on the live side of the mains input to the switch.
The first task is reduce the hum levels, caused by non existent screening on the audio leads.

Geordie McBoyne.

[ppppenguin]

These were always at the cheap and cheerful end of record players. They worked effectively enough for the intended purpose but couldn't give high quality sound and could wear out records pretty quickly.

I first saw something like this when I was in my teens. My parents had a reasonably decent record player which used ECC83/EL84/EZ80 and a fairly large speaker. I then saw and helped to fix a friend's machine which had, ISTR, a UCL??? or UL?? and UY85. I think the heaters ran from a tap on the motor windings. I was appalled at the lack of mains isolation but you never really heard of people getting hurt back then.

[Joe]

BSR decks had a tapping on the motor coil to provide 90V.

— Joe

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
These little record players were sold in huge numbers if we lump them all together.
Safety was at a minimum with them, I do understand Geordie's concern as he is "repairing" the player for a customer.
It would be foolish not to improve the safety aspect as he would be liable for any injuries from an electric shock, far better to safe than sorry in this Health & Safety era!