7.33mm and Joni Mitchell

Today was my LP day as my wife was out and I had the Home Theatre room for music instead of watching and endless stream of videos. Everything was going well untill I tried to play my 180g LP copy of Joni Mitchell Blue German LP reissue (7599 27199-1 when i discovered that the centre hole was too small for my Avid turntable. Thar type of thing happens from time to time with vinyl. The problem being, lack of standard hole size, variations in LP pressing and turntable spindles.

This time I decided to not attempt the usual fix of rotating a knife in the spindle (and possible making the hole too large) but looked into using a drill bit of the correct size. But as mentioned, there is no correct size although a specification was released by RIAA, defining the hole as 0.284–0.287-inch (7.2136 to 7.2898). Although there is no exact drill covering this size, a 7.3mm drill should do the trick. So I ordered three from Shanghai (they were cheap) and I will see how that goes.

If all works out, anyone who is interested can have one of them.

Joni Mitchell – Blue vinyl LP