Review: 40699 Retro Record Player
Posted by Huw,
We've recently had replicas of pianos, guitars, radios, typewriters and cameras, and now it's the turn of the humble record player, once found in almost every household, to be reproduced in LEGO form.
With vinyl back in fashion, now's a great time for LEGO to offer 40699 Retro Record Player as a GWP.
Summary
40699 Retro Record Player, 310 pieces.
A cute miniature facsimile of a once common household item.
- All features present and correct
- Built-in mechanism adds interest
- Not very retro: it looks like one you can buy today
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
The player is around 16cm x 12cm, so somewhat smaller than the real thing. Everything you'd expect to find on such a machine is present and correct (ish), though: transparent dust cover, turntable, arm, stylus, controls, large round vibration dampening feet, and a manufacturers' logo, in this case a bright and colourful one on an otherwise monochromatic model.
There's a mechanism inside that facilitates rotating the turntable by turning a spat gear at the back by hand. I particularly like the three different colour Technic pins representing the speaker and power supply sockets on the back.
There are also two sliding switches under the cover: the one on the left is obviously the on-off switch, but I'm not quite sure what the one on the right is, given it has six positions and lights next to it: pitch, possibly. There's also a printed rotary dial below it which LEGO's description suggests is the volume control.
The dust cover is hinged and can be propped open using the bar on the right. The arm can be rotated, but not lifted, to place the stylus on the record, which has some lovely printed tiles forming its label.
Here it is on a real turntable for scale.
Its diminutive size is not going to fool anyone that this is the real thing, like 21327 Typewriter or 21345 Polaroid OneStep SX-70 Camera might, but nevertheless, this is a cute and charming model and an awesome gift with purchase, one that will particularly appeal to vinyl aficionados.
It'll be available at LEGO.com during Insiders Weekend 23-24 November, free when you spend in excess of £225 / $250 / €250.
Do you have a collection of vinyl records? Or have you started buying them recently?
I still have around 1,000 disco, soul, jazz and funk albums and 12" singles from the 70s and early 80s that I enjoy digging out from time to time, although I did digitise them 15 or so years ago. There's something special about handling vinyl records, reading the sleeve notes, admiring the cover artwork, and remembering the first time you played them.
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54 comments on this article
My sister gave me and my wife a record player for Christmas last year. It's nice to put on a vinyl record every once in a while instead of listening to music another way. Our record player is pretty simple and cheap, but it has a switch on the right side for three playing speeds: 33, 45, and 18-1/2 rpm. Are there three more vinyl record speeds I don't know about?
Edit - never mind, I checked and the third speed is 78 rpm, not 18-1/2. It's pretty hard to read.
@iwybs said:
"Are there three more vinyl record speeds I don't know about?"
78rpm used to be popular until the 1950s. I've never come across 18.5 before. Presumably it's used for audio books and similar.
Not being able to lift the arm is a miss. I'm pretty sure it could be easily designed to do so at that scale...
The the long switch is probably the pitch, for DJing. Check the sl1200 this has the pitch fader under the tone arm
@Huw said:
"78rpm used to be popular until the 1950s."
I presume you haven't experienced 78rpm firsthand then, right?
You haven't, right? ;)
@Kapiteinkrunch said:
"The the long switch is probably the pitch, for DJing. Check the sl1200 this has the pitch fader under the tone arm "
I did consder that but the SL1200 and lookalies don't have lights next to the control, AFAIK, and this is a record player, not a turntable.
I'm a CD guy
This is a really nice little set, glad to add this one to my collection. I am curious about the lights though.
It reminds me of a Barratt's licorice Catherine wheel.
I have 2 turntables, and started collecting vinyls again a few years ago. I have more vinyls than CDs.
@Huw said:
" @iwybs said:
"Are there three more vinyl record speeds I don't know about?"
78rpm used to be popular until the 1950s. I've never come across 18.5 before. Presumably it's used for audio books and similar.
"
"Talking books" on vinyl played at 16-2/3 rpm.
@R1_Drift said:
"I'm a CD guy"
same!
When I heard about this, the historian in me time travelled to gramophones, so this was quite a disappointment.
Then again, I usually miss Insiders Weekend because of Black Friday releases and my wallet complains if I buy two expensive sets in two weeks.
@R1_Drift said:
"I'm a CD guy"
I rip the CDs I buy to my hard drive (which turned out to be a good decision when my CD collection was stolen out of storage after my stroke), but same here.
A good set, but there is more interesting choices out there.
Spin the black circle!
Lots of positives, but they should have left the record off and lowered the spend threshold. It just looks so weird with the record way too thick and the 'label' being raised.
Very cute set! My father and uncle collect vinyl records, so I'm pretty tempted to spend a lot of money during Insiders Weekend to get this set - maybe it's time to buy the Natural History Museum...
This is rather good, although I would call it a record deck or turntable. A record player was a chunkier affair with a built in speaker (e.g. the Bush SRP-31C that we had in the 60s).
One of the last LPs I bought was ELO's Out of the Blue, with the classic last line of Mr. Blue Sky being 'Please turn me over' (last track, side 3)
Looks pretty good.
As per size:
I have an old Philco-Ford Radio-Phono I bought off a buddy who bought it from an auction by mistake thinking it was a battery charger for mining cap lights.
As the same suggests, it's an AM radio and record player--even though size is about average for a portable AM radio of the era. Takes a rather tiny (I think even smaller than a CD) 45 that wasn't produced long back in the '60s.
@BrickJonas said:
"maybe it's time to buy the Natural History Museum..."
Yes, me too... couple of nice GWPs plus 2x points is quite tempting!
I like the label
@sjr60 said:
"This is rather good, although I would call it a record deck or turntable. A record player was a chunkier affair with a built in speaker (e.g. the Bush SRP-31C that we had in the 60s).
One of the last LPs I bought was ELO's Out of the Blue"
Absolute belter. Jungle, Wild West Hero, love it
@R1_Drift said:
"I'm a CD guy"
And they haven't done a CD player yet, have they...just a cassette player...? They need to.
Awesome! Is that Technic pin new in white?
@WolfpackBricksStudios said:
"Awesome! Is that Technic pin new in white?"
No, been around for while. Haven't you read my riviting article on the history of Technic pins? :-)
https://brickset.com/article/74062/a-history-of-technic-pins
Put the needle on the record...
I'm not really sold. Typewriter and Paloroid camera are more interesting and scaled better.
@Rare_White_Ape said:
"Spin the black circle!"
owww, that's what the Pearl Jam song is about!! :D
@iwybs said:
"My sister gave me and my wife a record player for Christmas last year. It's nice to put on a vinyl record every once in a while instead of listening to music another way. Our record player is pretty simple and cheap, but it has a switch on the right side for three playing speeds: 33, 45, and 18-1/2 rpm. Are there three more vinyl record speeds I don't know about?
Edit - never mind, I checked and the third speed is 78 rpm, not 18-1/2. It's pretty hard to read."
The 4 speeds on my first record player in around 1963 were 78rpm, 45rpm, 33 and a third rpm, and 16 and two thirds rpm.
@Murdoch17 said:
" @R1_Drift said:
"I'm a CD guy"
same!"
I'm still kinda a CD dude. I have about 800.
Yet, since slightly before the pandemic, bands have almost completely stopped bringing CDs to sell at concerts. That's where I buy most of my music because it more directly supports the band rather than crappy music company executives.
So, I went back to vinyl. I had a few as a kid. I have about 100 now. Vinyl is very cool. Bands release all kinds of colors and finishes to their records. So, watching them spin is a visual experience as well as auditory.
That said, I don't have any attraction to this GWP. My turntable is a faux-old-timey-classic model that also has a CD player.
Nevertheless, I'll likely end up with one. I don't have any idea why they are making a Black Friday GWP so difficult. Just make something about Christmas, or winter, or a classic Lego theme like we all used to get.... AT CHRISTMAS!!!
I have no desire for this set. But I will most likely be spending enough on Insiders Weekend to get at least one of these. If they are still available Black Friday when the Endurance releases I will procure another one. So they will go in the parts bin.
@Huw said:
"...the three different colour Technic pins representing the speaker and power supply sockets on the back."
Err... I'd say that's Right (red), Left (white) and Ground (grey) for connecting the turntable to the amp.
It's cute, but kinda tiny. It's what, the size of two cassettes?
I was quite excited to see this GWP. Then I read the review and saw the size of it. No thanks!! It’s adorable, but certainly not worth spending $325 Canadian to get it!! Overall, Lego pricing is getting ridiculous and the thresholds for these GWP are crazy high. And is it just me? The GWP offers haven’t seemed to mesh well with new release dates recently.
@Huw said:
" @Kapiteinkrunch said:
"The the long switch is probably the pitch, for DJing. Check the sl1200 this has the pitch fader under the tone arm "
I did consder that but the SL1200 and lookalies don't have lights next to the control, AFAIK, and this is a record player, not a turntable.
"
You're definitely mistaken in the nomenclature here. Colloquially, "turntable" and "record player" are used interchangeably. Technically (pun not intended), a turntable is a device with a motor, platter, tonearm, and cartridge that outputs only a phono preamp level signal, while a record player is an integrated device containing everything a turntable does plus a preamp, amp, and speaker(s). This is not an American vs British English thing, either.
As such, 40699 is definitely a turntable technically, and LEGO has named the set using the colloquial synonym usage instead of the technical distinction.
A SL1200 is an example of a subtype of turntable, the DJ turntable.
@gearwheel said:
" @Huw said:
" @Kapiteinkrunch said:
"The the long switch is probably the pitch, for DJing. Check the sl1200 this has the pitch fader under the tone arm "
I did consder that but the SL1200 and lookalies don't have lights next to the control, AFAIK, and this is a record player, not a turntable.
"
You're definitely mistaken in the nomenclature here. Colloquially, "turntable" and "record player" are used interchangeably. Technically (pun not intended), a turntable is a device with a motor, platter, tonearm, and cartridge that outputs only a phono preamp level signal, while a record player is an integrated device containing everything a turntable does plus a preamp, amp, and speaker(s). This is not an American vs British English thing, either.
As such, 40699 is definitely a turntable technically, and LEGO has named the set using the colloquial synonym usage instead of the technical distinction.
A SL1200 is an example of a subtype of turntable, the DJ turntable."
Record Players also often had glorious clunky auto-changers to play a big pile of 45s (and often damage them because they slipped!)
@tomahawker said:
"Put the needle on the record..." lm
’…. When the drumbeats go like this ……’ absolute classic dance track from my youth!!!!!
@gearwheel said:
"As such, 40699 is definitely a turntable technically, and LEGO has named the set using the colloquial synonym usage instead of the technical distinction."
Thank you, so once again LEGO has named a set incorrectly. What a surprise... :-)
1. Record players are here to stay.
2. It wasn't hard to create a dust cover mold for TLG.
@tomahawker said:
"Put the needle on the record..."
Pump Up The Volume, Pump Up The Volume, Pump Up The Volume. This, This!
For those who know.
can I moc this into my white P10?
<3
:)
@Givememorebricks said:
" @tomahawker said:
"Put the needle on the record..."
Pump Up The Volume, Pump Up The Volume, Pump Up The Volume. This, This!
For those who know."
I don't want 2 turntables or a microphone...
But, I will probably end up with them anyway. (sans microphone)
@iwybs said:
"... it has a switch on the right side for three playing speeds: 33, 45, and (78) rpm. Are there three more vinyl record speeds I don't know about?"
There are two very obscure speeds used almost exclusively by the library of congress for special records for the blind: 8 1/3and 16 2/3. I've never actually seen a player that supports them.
78 is largely obsolete, having been very common before the 1950s. It's still supported by many (not all) record players because a third speed setting is easy enough and some hobbyists collect antique vinyl.
Neat for a GWP, but I'd be far more interested in a closer-to actual size full set if the design and features were solid.
"Is that a turntable? Get on it. It's your turn."
@Zrath said:
""Is that a turntable? Get on it. It's your turn.""
I used ours a lot as a turntable for trolls in the 60's. Great fun changing the speed to make them fly off!
@sjr60 said:
" @Zrath said:
""Is that a turntable? Get on it. It's your turn.""
I used ours a lot as a turntable for trolls in the 60's. Great fun changing the speed to make them fly off!"
I'm reminded of Woody playing on the record player in Toy Story 2.
On my parents old Hi-Fi system, the mechanism to start the turntable was a slider on a spring (think pinball launch), the slider had a couple of "stops" which when pulled (against the spring) would (when playing a record) automatically lift the arm and retract it to its cradle.,
Maybe this slider switch is a representation of that mechanism...
@Nahmidget said:
" @iwybs said:
"My sister gave me and my wife a record player for Christmas last year. It's nice to put on a vinyl record every once in a while instead of listening to music another way. Our record player is pretty simple and cheap, but it has a switch on the right side for three playing speeds: 33, 45, and 18-1/2 rpm. Are there three more vinyl record speeds I don't know about?
Edit - never mind, I checked and the third speed is 78 rpm, not 18-1/2. It's pretty hard to read."
The 4 speeds on my first record player in around 1963 were 78rpm, 45rpm, 33 and a third rpm, and 16 and two thirds rpm."
Iirc 16 2/3 only was used much for audiobooks and literature aimed at blind people - latter usually came with extra information on braille papers
This seems to mostly be a “faux Technics S1200” considering appearance. You could argue its retro since its from the 90s. Though “retro record player” is something conjuring images of the 70s hifi era for most people.
@sjr60 said:
" @gearwheel said:
" @Huw said:
" @Kapiteinkrunch said:
"The the long switch is probably the pitch, for DJing. Check the sl1200 this has the pitch fader under the tone arm "
I did consder that but the SL1200 and lookalies don't have lights next to the control, AFAIK, and this is a record player, not a turntable.
"
You're definitely mistaken in the nomenclature here. Colloquially, "turntable" and "record player" are used interchangeably. Technically (pun not intended), a turntable is a device with a motor, platter, tonearm, and cartridge that outputs only a phono preamp level signal, while a record player is an integrated device containing everything a turntable does plus a preamp, amp, and speaker(s). This is not an American vs British English thing, either.
As such, 40699 is definitely a turntable technically, and LEGO has named the set using the colloquial synonym usage instead of the technical distinction.
A SL1200 is an example of a subtype of turntable, the DJ turntable."
Record Players also often had glorious clunky auto-changers to play a big pile of 45s (and often damage them because they slipped!)
"
Alot of those actually also supported LPs. Its why alot of mid 60s to early 70s Pop and Rock Double albums were sequenced A/D B/C instead of the previous norm of A/B C/D.
I think its honestly a shame its a GWP. As a small 20 bucks set I’d have bought it no hesitation, even if its slight inaccurate.
@Eightcoins8 said:
"I think its honestly a shame its a GWP. As a small 20 bucks set I’d have bought it no hesitation, even if its slight inaccurate."
Yeah, I have no plans of spending enough to hit the threshold, but I'll probably look for it on the aftermarket.
@Murdoch17 said:
" @R1_Drift said:
"I'm a CD guy"
same!"
Another CD guy here!