Rek-O-Kut CVS-12
A broadcast-grade turntable that dials from 25 to 100 RPM continuously. It was built for sound-effects men, dance callers, and anyone who needed a record to play at a speed the label never printed.
Overview
Most turntables give you three speeds. The CVS-12 gives you a knob. Rek-O-Kut's continuously variable unit sweeps from 25 to 100 RPM at 60 cycles, and from 20 to 85 RPM on 50-cycle current. The operator can land on any platter speed in that range without stopping the record or resetting anything. The company's own literature pitched it for sound-effects work - simulating a car changing speed, the roar of a missile, "a host of other aural techniques" - by riding the speed control up or down from the recorded value. It also found a home in musical-instrument teaching, dance instruction, square-dance calling, and background music in skating rinks and amusement centers, where a fixed pitch was less useful than a controllable one.
The numbers are respectable for the period. Rumble is rated at -35 dB, wow at 0.098% maximum, and flutter at 0.085% maximum. They aren't the vanishingly low figures the best hysteresis-motor broadcast tables could claim. Rek-O-Kut built the CVS-12 to professional standards and said so, positioning its rumble, flutter, and instant-start performance alongside the rest of the professional line. A four-pole induction motor drives the platter. Underneath sits the same heavy aluminum casting that defined the brand's turntables, lathe-turned and balanced.
The chassis measures 15 inches wide and 16 inches deep, and weighs 15 pounds bare. Buyers could take it as a chassis/motor/turntable assembly, or step up to the CVS-12S system, which added a custom base, a type S-320 tone arm, and an ORK stereo cartridge, type F3. The system version weighed 22 pounds. The portable variant, the CVS-12P, packaged the works in a carrying case with a 16-inch dual-stylus pickup.
Pricing moved over the model's life. Early-1950s advertising listed the bare CVS-12 at $84.95 net, with the CVS-12P portable at $124.95. A later listing put the turntable at $169.50 and the full system at $225. The CVS-12 was still being advertised as a component in a recommended hi-fi package as late as 1954, and DB-Magazine (July 1970, p.39) noted the variable-speed CVS-12 was "again in production" - a second act for a table that had been on the market since the early 1950s.
The continuous speed control is what makes the CVS-12 collectible today, and it is what made the table odd then. As with most machines of this vintage, the idler-drive mechanism and the speed-control linkage are the parts that need attention. A unit that's sat unused for decades will want its lubrication and drive surfaces checked before it gets a stylus.
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