Future Turntable Owner
Reply #4 – 2011-07-13 15:41:48
_komodo_, having been in a situation similar to yours (picking up a turntable after acquiring a few records here and there), I would second cliveb's suggestion to just find the releases on CD/downloads. Vinyl is a colossal PITA, and a cheap turntable will only make it more so. I ended up with a pretty decent setup by going the used Japanese direct-drive route (a Pioneer PL-4 on eBay for $60) and getting a new Shure cartridge ($80), a little Audio-Technica preamp ($45), and Shure's tracking force gauge ($28). I even ended up springing for a vacuum record cleaner, the KAB EV-1 ($180). End result? With an excellent pressing (which you, of course, have no control over), the results could be surprisingly good...but the CD or digital download was always better, i.e. completely noise/distortion-free, and just overall cleaner sounding. With a less-than-excellent pressing, the results could be damned annoying because of all the various surface noises due to flaws in the vinyl itself, and no amount of cleaning can cure those. A cheap turntable, which you're currently looking at, is simply going to exacerbate all of vinyl's flaws, and possibly cause physical damage to the records themselves depending on the tracking force and overall quality of the cartridge and stylus. While it's true that vinyl can sound "better" than its digital counterpart if it's mastered differently (no brickwall limiting, for instance), I've found that situation to be fairly rare (and, of course, not a quality of the medium itself), and usually I get much better sound - and far less stress - by just finding a given release on CD or as a download.