runout

i have a strange old combination cassette player / 8-track player / record player with an amplifier so you can plug your speakers right into it.
i bought it for twenty bucks from an old wrinkled guy who wore a cowboy hat and kept his shirts unbuttoned to his belly button at all times. weird guy.

the console is strange in that the on / off switch only turns off the amplifier portion. you could conceivably have the thing off, but still have the tape player, 8-track and record player all running at the same time. presumably this is so that you could make a cassette dub of a record or 8-track.

the record player's automatic-return gizmo is kinda misaligned, so usually records get stuck in the runout groove.

i was listening to my new Thomas Köner 7" about two weeks ago, apparently, and turned off the unit, not hearing anything...
well the needle was stuck in the runout groove for two weeks...

i've calculated that the piece of vinyl must have spun in the neighborhood of
seven hundred thousand times stuck in that lock groove, at 33 and a half revolutions per minute.

so i turned on the thing today, to listen to my newly arrived PBK cassette, and i'm confronted with a very strange rumbling noise,

and so i discovered the 7" turning there with powderized vinyl lining the edges of that runout groove.

nice.

i wonder if my needle is shot.