Help... my turntable is alive!

Well, thank you all for those excellent thoughts.

1. I played a very flat thick 45 RPM record 12" and there was no "heartbeat" at all. Not faster, but rather gone.

2. I checked the belt and it looks fine.

I'm thinking it was a record warp. Since it does not happen on the very flat records, then the turntable bearing is probably OK.

The cartridge comes very, very close to the record when playing and a sharp warp could be the "bottoming out" heartbeat noise. Certainly I need to inspect this issue for more evidence.

I immediately feared the worst, and typed up my question in haste. Thanks again, and I will be doing a more scientific investigation in the next few days and post my results.

John

Bondmap ... A very thoughtful idea, but I have checked twice. There is no sticky feel to the belt, or the platter anywhere. I could order a new belt, but I don't want to start down the money path until I know I'm at least on the correct path.

Thanks ... John

OP here... It seems we are a bit off track. Does it really matter which side of the egg you crack?

Upon further examination, it is not a record warp. I am still having the problem even with flat records. My cartridge is not bottoming out. My VTA is OK by sight. The tonearm is horizontal to the record surface, and there is some daylight between the cartridge and the record. My cartridge, Goldring 1042 is just built to come close to the record due to the cantilever being short. The "heartbeat" sound is still present, but only after the first few minutes and then going away a few minutes after that. I have tried several different records, but still the same effect. While I haven't completed all of my investigation, I wanted to keep you up to date on the latest swing from my previous post.

A replacement belt is $170. Not exactly a trivial expense.

Group,
Thanks for all the suggestions. I was playing records last night and again, the noise was gone. I'm now thinking the noise is record specific, or at least some records are a catalyst to the noise occurring. Either way I should point out that the noise is coming from my subwoofers, as I think my main speakers would not produce the noise at any detectable level. So it comes and goes with different records, and I have more work to do in my investigation. Since it doesn't happen on every LP then maybe the problem isn't even with the turntable setup? Lastly I want to say that the noise is very faint and most people would not hear it unless it was pointed out at each occurrence. I'm still trying to get to the bottom of this... will keep you posted.