Garrard RC-88
A changer that lifted records off the platter instead of dropping them onto it, and stayed the best-selling unit in the component field because of it.
Overview
Most automatic changers of the 1950s asked the record to do the hard work. It fell, dropped, or slid down a spindle to meet the platter. The Garrard RC-88 did the opposite. Its "pusher platform" lifted records off the turntable and carried them into position. Garrard's own catalog copy from the period claimed this was the only automatic device that insured positive, gentle handling of all records regardless of diameter, condition of the center hole, or the surface of the disc itself. That one mechanism is why the RC-88 became, in the company's words, the best-selling unit in the entire high fidelity component field. It also turns up in period installations decades later as a fixture of serious early stereo rigs.
The RC-88 was not a budget piece. Garrard's literature listed the changer at $59.50 less cartridge, which in the late 1950s was real money against a market full of cheaper automatics. The pitch was engineering, not economy. The tone arm was a cast-aluminum, true-tangent design (Garrard's spelling, not ours), chosen for rigidity, low resonance, and low mass. It had lightweight interchangeable plug-in heads that would accept a cartridge of any make. The spindles came in manual and automatic versions. Garrard was explicit that they had no moving parts to nick or enlarge record center holes, and with the spindle removed, records could be lifted from the turntable without interference.
Period coverage treated the RC-88 as a known quantity rather than a novelty. High Fidelity (1962, p.44) documented a pair of custom installations, one built into an unused doorway by Allied Radio and another in a shelf unit beside a fireplace. Both centered on the Garrard RC-88 changer fitted with a Pickering 371 cartridge. Electronics Illustrated (November 1958, p.4) put the RC-88 on its cover alongside the Bogen D8212, the McIntosh C88, the Leak Stereo 50, and the Rek-O-Kut B-12GH. That is flattering company for a changer.
The RC-88 also had a life as a working machine, and the record shows it. A reader's letter to Electronics Illustrated (October 1959) described an RC-88/4 that would occasionally slow down and stop mid-cycle, and a full stack of 45s that wouldn't drop properly from the special spindle. The magazine's advice was plain: clean the rubber idler tire and the pulley and drum surfaces it contacts with gasoline, and check for binding in the lever arms and cams under the motor board. Collectors report the same today. An RC-88 that has been sitting will usually need its idler serviced before it will cycle reliably.
By 1959 the changer was common enough to appear in the classifieds as ordinary used gear. One tape recording want-ad offered an RC-88 with a GE cartridge and base for $45. Garrard's own 1958 advertising noted that models change but ideals do not, that meaningful new features are added while time-proven ones are retained, and that thirty-five years of experience guided the present line. Owners who have kept them running tend to describe the same virtue: it handles records gently, and it does so without drama.
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