About

The Sony PS-F5 is a marvel of engineering, first sold by Sony in 1983. It’s a small, portable turntable which runs off regular batteries or an external power supply. It plays 7″ or 12″ records at 45 or 33.3 RPM and most impressively it will do so either laying down or standing up, due to its linear tracking, direct drive and record clamping system. It has dual headphone sockets so you can listen with a friend or plug it into an amplifier and a nifty swivelling foot arrangement for stability when standing upright.

There is also the PS-F9, which is harder to find than the F5. This is pretty much the same device except it features quartz lock (accurate speed control), line out (in addition to the 2 headphones out) and “disc hold”: an automatic record clamping system, rather than the manual clamp of the F5. Also, according to this page (translated from Japanese,) some PS-F9s included an internal FM transmitter. Never heard that anywhere else, maybe a Japan-only addition?

Maybe the scarcity of the F9 is due to the fact it was more expensive and few people thought the added features were worth the extra cash, or maybe the extra electrical circuits and devices meant there was more to go wrong and they’ve mainly died. I’m not sure.
Both models were sold under the Flamingo banner in Japan.

Cost in Today’s Money

I don’t know what these devices sold for in Europe or The U.S., but in the above image you can see that the F9 sold in Japan for ¥39,800 and the F5 for ¥29,800. That roughly converts to the F9 being £107 (US$163) in 1983 and the F5 £80 (US$122). In today’s money, that’s around £260 ($350) for the F9 and £200 (US$260) for the F5. So these devices weren’t cheap.
The custom case works out to around £9 (US$15) in ‘83, £25 (US$35) in today’s money.

Things tend to be more expensive in Japan than the West (especially the U.S.), but this gives us an idea.

Two owners have written in to say that they paid US$39.95 and US$49.90, although this was a while after the product’s launch and these were likely to be knocked-down prices.

Linear Tracking

If the arm is not pivoted, but instead travels horizontally along a radius of the disc, there is no skating force and no cartridge angle error. Such arms are driven along a linear track using an electronic servomechanism, or a precise mechanical adjustment to position it properly.

Early Edison phonographs had used similarly horizontal spring-powered drives to carry the stylus across the record at a pre-determined rate. In practice, the linear tracking system is not widely used today because of its complexity and related expense. However, some of the most sophisticated and expensive systems still employ this technique. It is nearly ideal, as the stylus replicates the motion of the recording lathe when the master recording was cut. (Source: Wikipedia)

Direct Drive

A direct-drive turntable is one of two main phonograph designs being manufactured today. The other style is the belt-drive turntable. Each name is based upon the type of drive motor used. Both are primarily for playing 12″ and 7″ vinyl disc records.

In a direct drive turntable the motor is located directly under the center of the platter and is connected to the platter directly. The first commercially available direct-drive turntable, the model SP-10, was introduced by the Technics division of Matsushita in 1969.

Direct drive turntables may suffer from vibration due to the motor. This is less of an issue for belt-drive turntables. However, in recent years, shock-absorbing (less dense) material, placed between the motor and platter, has been used to cut back on vibrations. The torque on direct drive turntables is usually much higher than on belt drive models. This means the platter speed is less susceptible to outside forces (stylus, hand). Higher torque also means the platter will accelerate to its proper speed faster so less distortion is heard when the record begins to play. (Source: Wikipedia)