Belt for Technics SL-L20, L20S, L20K, SL-L25, L25M L25K SLL20 SLL25 LA-HE CLICK
Brand New Technics SL-L25 Belt from Atlanta Pro Sound! Welcome to Atlanta Pro Sound Available as Buy it Now one (1) brand new replacement belt for Technics turntable, models SL-L20 SL-L20S SL-L20K SL-L25 SL-L25M SL-L25K SLL20 SLL25 Be careful before you buy a belt for this model!!! This is NOT the most common Technics belt! There is a lot of bad information on the Internet ( including eBay) about exactly which belt this turntable takes, I was assistant manager of a store that was the LARGEST Technics dealer in the Southeast US for TWO (2) decades. I used to order this belt directly from Technics Parts when the SL-L20 and SL-L25 were in production. I know what belt you take, and I even have the service manual to back me up. Don’t trust your Linear Tracking Technics to someone who saw bad info on your turntable who also has an account at an electronics parts place! There is a myth that one belt fits 95% of all turntables. In reality, nothing is further from the truth. A belt that is an inch too large or small will probably run on your turntable, but if it is too small, it will wear out your motor years before it would under normal conditions. If it is too large, it might also be bad for the motor, but as belts get older, they expand, so in the best case, you need a replacement years before you should.There are people online who have been selling belts for 5-10 years. Many have lots of feedback or websites that “look” like they know what they are doing. Do they really know what belt is the match for your turntable? Technics quit giving technical support on the models SL-L25, SL-L25S and SL-L25K (including part numbers) about a decade and a half ago. When the models SL-L20, SL-L20S, SL-L20K, SL-L25, SL-L25M, SL-L25S and SL-L25K rolled off the assembly line, I was an Assistant Store Manager for the largest independent Technics dealer in the Southeastern US. Read the ABOUT ATLANTA PROSOUND below for more information. (In case you are wondering…I enter the model with the dash in different positions so those who search for the model can find it regardless of if they have the dash in the right place!) 5 Belt Measurements All flat rubber belts have 5 measurements that affect the belt’s performance. Length is the one most people think of right away. Length affects how tight the belt is. If it is too tight, the motor will not run (or if it is just a little too tight, the motor will wear out quickly). Width is one you might not think is important, however, the manufacturers specify this one down to the 64th of an inch! If the belt is too wide, the risk is the belt will hit the outsides of the capstan, which will create momentary bumps in the speed. If the belt is too narrow, it does not have enough contact with the capstan, causing it to slip. Either of these problems may be inaudible at first, but later? Who knows? Thickness of the belt is the smallest of the measurements. Most Turntable belts are close to the same thickness, but your parts provider who has only a decade of experience might buy their belts based on length and their cost alone. You could get a belt that they bought wholesale at 99 cents but is way too thick! A belt that is too thick will not fully fold around the capstan, causing more pitch problems. If you call to complain, you are told that your turntable has natural Wow and Flutter. Friends: These models’ Wow and Flutter is eight (8) times below the audible limit (Sources: Julian Hirsch – Hirsch-Houck Labs and the Technics models SL-B1, SL-B1A SL-B2, SL-B2A, SL-B2K SL-B3, SL-B3A, SL-B5 and SL-B5A Service Manuals). Don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes! If you hear wow and flutter (a.k.a. bad speed fluctuation), you might just have the wrong size belt! External Diameter. This one is a no-brainer, it is closely related to the thickness and internal diameter. Internal Diameter. Like #4, this one is also a no-brainer, it is closely related to the thickness and external diameter. Many old-style belts were cut to size. Modern (get it out the door as fast as you can) cutting techniques can lead to inconsistencies and inferior product. This belt is not cut, it is precision molded to meet original factory specifications for the Technics SL-L25, SL-L25S and SL-L25K. The belt you are about to receive was recently manufactured by the same company that made the first belts for the Technics models SL-L25, SL-L25S and SL-L25K. My distributor, Artistic Audio of Atlanta, buys thousands of belts made by this company and has been sending them all over the United States for many years. Every few of weeks Artistic Audio of Atlanta reorders belts buy the hundred, replacing the stock they have sold. No belt is on their shelf more than a few weeks. Because they come into the distributor regularly, I can personally guarantee that the belt you get is fresh! From 1979 until 1992, I was assistant store manager of the largest independent Technics dealer in the Southeastern US. I used to place Technics Orders Technics PARTS Orders Other finished goods and parts for our whole company. One day, I was giving a parts order to our Technics Parts Rep. And wanted to order 30 belts for the model SL-B200. She told me “I am sorry, those are backordered.” I replied “How can that be?! We just got SL-B200s in yesterday afternoon??” She told me that parts was independent of sales, they might have 100s of turntables, but no belts in stock at parts.” Then she added You could try [manufacturer’s name omitted] (a major parts manufacturer), that is who we buy all of out belts from.” It just so happened that my company was a [manufacturer’s name omitted] dealer, so, I called and ordered my 30 belts. I have been ordering Technics turntable belts from them ever since, because they made the belts for Technics (until Technics Parts quit selling belts!). You can not get any better than a belt made by the company that made them from the start! In 1992 my employer closed my location as part of a business deal that later went wrong. They put “all of their eggs” in the home theater basket. They kept me as an electronics sales person-independent contractor for 6 years. After that, I did Technics belt sales for my half-brother (who was also my manager at the Technics dealer) for several years, earning him over 2,000 feedback points at 100% positive. My non-compete clause has expired, and now I am offering my knowledge and expertise directly to you! My feedback score is a little low, but just wait! The PROPER belt for these turntable has been somewhat of a mystery to many of my competitors. It came out right around the time that Technics/Panasonic/MCS redesigned their belt-drive system, during that redesign they went from one size belt to another. There is a lot of misinformation about this model on an official-looking turntable-parts specialty company (that opened in the mid 1990s, long after this turntable was discontinued), specifically, the belt that they say this turntable needs is a little too narrow and 6% too small!!! Many want-to-be belt specialists on eBay have copied the wrong information from their website and have been selling the wrong belt. I have notes on the SL-L25, SL-L25S and SL-L25K in my master notebook. (I did not realize that in 20-some years that my notebook would be one of the best sources for Technics belt sizes or that I would be sharing that information with so many people!) I have a Technics Belt Cross-Reference sheet that includes these models, and I have confirmed my facts with the service manual (including the part sheet with original part numbers). The SL-L25, SL-L25S and SL-L25K turntables are fully-automatic, linear tracking, belt drive turntable that was designed to operate at 33 and 45 RPMs. They are fully-automatic, which means that you press the start button (second from right) in order to play a record. If the repeat button is off, after the record is complete, the turntable picks the arm up and returns to the off position. The power switch (far left) on the SL-L25 is either on or off. The speed switch (top right) was two position, 33 and 45. A single short press of the Stop Button will send the turntable into its shut off mode (the turntable picks the arm up and returns to the off position). If you would like to play a single song or section of the record, the tone arm can be moved toward the beginning or end of the record. Pressing and holding the Stop button for more than a second will make the arm pick up and move toward the beginning of the record. Pressing and holding the Play button for more than a second will move the arm toward the end of the record. The SL-L25 has no pitch control has control. The turntable has a sleek, streamlined look and most of the controls are in front of the dust cover, so it can be operated without raising the cover. There is no functional difference between the SL-L25S and SL-L25K. The difference is the SL-L25S is silver and the SL-L25K is “black”, which to Technics means dark brown. Again, this is from my memory, if you have other information, please contact me with the “Ask a Question” link below, OK? The 45 Adaptor is in the center of the platter, it raises and lowers as needed. Are you about to purchase one of these models? The motor and drive system are built like a tank. Seeing it run may be your least concern. Here is what I check before buying: It should have a P-Mount (T4P) cartridge that plugs directly into the tonearm. If you need a P-Mount (T4P) cartridge, I should get them online soon, click on “Ask Seller a Question”. The cartridge should have a stylus. Styluses are “needles” that have the piece that touches the grove and plays the record. Look at the stylus. Does it have a piece of metal that lowers to the record, and is there a tip on the end of it? There are too many kinds of styluses to list them all on eBay. I have about 2,000 in stock, I probably have the one you need. If you need a stylus, click on “Ask Seller a Question” to send me a message. If you play this turntable and the stylus seems to get stuck partially through the side of an album, do not stop your quest to repair it, and definitely do not discard the turntable. These tables are “linear tracking” and they have a “tonearm belt” which guides the tonearm as it travels from start to finish. The tonearm belt is tricky to replace, but is replaceable! Click “Contact Seller” below atlantaprosound on the upper right of this page. You may have heard someone say that the sound of vinyl sounds better than CDs. “How can this be?” you may wonder…the CDs do not have that scratchy sound. It is a matter of detail, really. You can prove it yourself with a $20.00 thrift-store turntable and a generic stylus. Get a copy of something easy to get, something acoustic, something like James Taylor’s, Carly Simon’s or Carol King’s greatest hits. (The demonstration works best with acoustic guitar, harp or lute, but once you have noticed the difference, you will be able to hear the difference on everything! The introduction to Ventura Highway by America will work well also.) Play it on your turntable, and listen especially to the very beginnings of each note in the guitar. Focus your attention to the very beginnings of each plucked string. The strings will sound almost like you can hear each of them roll off of the player’s fingers. That is the way it should sound all of the time. Now, play the same selection on a CD. You will probably notice that the beginnings of the notes sound muffled or slow. The beginnings of the notes on the CD have much less detail than their counterparts on vinyl. The reason is built into the way CD players work. CDs have a sampling rate of 44,100 samples per second. What this means is the volume level of a given sound is recorded at that frequency. The problem? Many parts of a musical note are very short in duration, like say, the just first part of a plucked string, the part where the recording goes from no sound to the very loudest part of its sound. The string creates the sound in less than 1/44,100th of a second. While the volume of the actual string is getting progressively louder, the volume on the CD recording is an average. As a note quickly gets louder, the CD sounds like stair steps, because we have a recording of averages for the length of time of the sample. People who argue that there is no stair-stepping miss the main point. The sampling rate is too slow to reach the peak of a plucked string! By the time it gets 3/4 of the way there, it is time to come back. Plucks of strings sound better on analogue. As soon as you hear it, you will hear it on the beginnings of all notes. While the volume of the actual string is getting progressively louder, the volume on the CD recording is an average. As a note quickly gets louder, the CD sounds like stair steps, because we have a recording of averages for the length of time of the sample. While the volume of the actual string is getting progressively louder, the volume on the CD recording is an average. As a note quickly gets louder, the CD sounds like stair steps, because we have a recording of averages for the length of time of the sample. This is why the vinyl sounds more like the original sound than the CD. Once you hear this, you will always look at listening for detail in the sound differently. It might be a good idea to stop reading those sights that say you can’t hear the difference with digital stair-stepping and start listening for yourself. Do you need them to tell you what you can hear?? Listen intently for the very first sounds made with the plucks of strings, the hammers striking the strings on a piano, the “attack” of each note. Once you hear you will notice more detail forever. Buying a new belt so you can transfer all your vinyl to CD? If you have read and understand the previous section, then you might want to re-think. The CD recording you make can not possibly sound the same as the vinyl, because in making the recording, you are creating the same stair-stepping sound that does not sound as good as the original vinyl! OK, OK, if you want to make CDs for the car, go ahead, but if you want to make CDs for detailed listening, maybe you should keep your vinyl. Georgia Residents will pay 7% Sales Tax. Shipping and handling is only $1.99 to any point in the USA. Belts are shipped by USPS Ground Advantage (2-5 Day expected delivery). Please, ask in advance about international shipping. Priority Mail shipping to the US is available for $9.65. Most items are shipped within 1 business day. Thanks in advance for your purchase!