Ready to organise a player system solely for 7" records

[Electronic M]

Record cleaning can also be an important consideration in 45's. I don't know how well yours have been taken care of, but if they are like many I've encountered where there is so much dirt in the groves that after a few seconds of the first play in years the dirt dug out of the grooves lifts the needle out of the groove, then I would recommend looking into the wood glue cleaning method.

Another option would be to get a linear tracking turntable that uses a P-mount cartridge such as the Technics SL-5 or SL-6. They are fairly gentle on records and you can swap cartridges really fast and easy. This would allow you to switch between a line contact(Shibata) based pickup and a conical one....From regularly using both types I can say that depending on the given record and it's playing history a record could respond better to either type. This is because the two sit at different heights in the groove. If there is a lot of dirt in the bottom the line-contact types that ride lower will make more noise, but if the record was played repeatedly with too much tracking force and an old school conical, then a linecontact may be a better choice as it will ride below the old conical groove damage and play likely pristine groove surface. Line contact pickups tend to be a better choice for minimizing record wear as a line contact stili distributes the tracking force over a larger surface area of the groove thus reducing friction and wear on the record.