So the better half and I have decided that we want a quality turn table. We don't have a lot to spend, but don't want a piece of junk. What's out there? Where's a good place to look? What to look for?
So the better half and I have decided that we want a quality turn table. We don't have a lot to spend, but don't want a piece of junk. What's out there? Where's a good place to look? What to look for?
If you're looking for a classic, I'd look at used/vintage audio stores. Do you want USB output?
First of all, make sure your amp has a phono stage in the preamp section. Magnetic cartridges have a very low output, plus the "RIAA curve" used to cut the disc must be compensated for.
Once you have that squared away, a quality turntable is fully manual and uses belt drive (direct drive is junk sound-wise) to isolate the motor fully from the platter. A good tone arm has very low mass so look for something that doesn't seem to be made of sewer pipe.
Use a quality moving magnet cartridge unless you feel like paying for the extra step-up amplifier needed by a moving coil cartridge. There are mounting gauges still available to help you align the cartridge in the arm properly.
Have fun looking. I used to sell hi-fi equipment during its heyday back in the seventies.
I prefer vintage... the high point of "mainstream" turntables was the late 70's/early 80's and very high end tables from that period can be found for a couple hundred dollars (or less... I've picked up solid units at yardsales for pennies... but most needed work and a good cartridge... so you still end up near $200 unless you really luck out.).
In general, you want to stay away from autochangers (generally not very good quality) and even autoreturns are looked down on by audiophiles (to much machinery hooked to the arm)... but it is a PITA to have to jump up at the end of each side so your stylus isn't going roundy-roundy.
Direct drive vs belt drive... cheapest tables are direct, but a really good direct is better than an average belt... a little more noise imparted on the platter but less wow/flutter. Better belts are clearly superior.
On higher end units, tone arms are swapable... and highly debated.
Cartridge technology kept evolving, but sort of split... so you have divided opinions between MM and MC types (in general the MC gives more accurate sound, but needs an MC capable phono stage... and MM guys prefer the 'warmer" sound of the MM for rock (and sometimes jazz, though opinion there is split)
Many phono stages/RIA correction is modern electronics are horrible... plan to get a decent phono stage even if you pipe it into an aux input on a modern amp.
So in general, you can pick the table, arm, and cartridge all separately... or like with project cars you can find one somebody else has already assembled.
For my main deck, I have a late fully manual 70's Kenwood table with a heavy simulated marble plinth, thought to be one of the best direct drives out there with a reasonable "stock" arm. I paid under $200 for it with a usable high end stylus and a nice dust cover (often missing/broken)
I eventually bought a higher end cartridge (still MM; moved the still very good cartiridge to my #2 table, replacing a well worn MC) for a couple hundred, a vintage Kenwood C1 solid state preamp (known for a particulary nice phono stage) for about $100, then did an external rewire of the arm directly to the preamp (bypassing all the internal wiring/plugs).
And properly suspended the table (actually in my case, I did a fairly solid connect to a concrete floor) and played with mat materials for a while before finding exactly the sound I wanted. (Final choice was a fairly expensive audiophile mat I simply fell in love with... but the #2 choice was Home Depot Shelf liner!)
So for about a $500 investment, I have a good solid table. Frankly, at the original $200 investment it was at least 90% as good as it is now... so if you start off with a solid unit, you're already way ahead. It can't touch a new $10,000 setup, but for the money why would I expect it to? I recognize that I don't play in that realm... ;-)
Plenty of vinyl sites out there... some more vintage/grassroots than others. http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1&ctg&3&& http://audioaficionado.org/ http://www.vinylengine.com/
Here's the group I was searching for... haven't hung out there lately but used to be a good mix of grassroots and hardcore types... with the latter not disparging the former. YMMV now...
http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/etv.mpl?forum=vinyl
I have not thought of turntables in years but back in about 1982 my B-I-L had one of these from B&O and it was pretty amazing.
http://cgi.ebay.com/BANG-OLUFSEN-BEOGRAM-1602-VINTAGE-TURNTABLE-COOL-B-O_W0QQitemZ170600632602QQcategoryZ48649QQcmdZViewItem
You got me nosing around the site again... not good.
http://trade.audioasylum.com/ca/listing/Turntables/Rotel-RP-2500/RP-2500/Please-read-the-ad/43401
Here's a solid, mid-range table for $200 (sounds somewhat soft)... and that includes a nice dust cover, a new belt, and a new $80 cartridge... not a bad combo.
Still going with belt drive in all circumstances over direct. Rumble will be a worse problem than wow and flutter. Any properly working turntable of any quality will have undetectable wow and flutter.
+1 on a good phono stage. Modern integrated circuit amps leave much to be desired sound-wise. Tubes aren't necessary but a good discrete solid state phono stage will be fine.
+1 on a good mat and a solid base. Rumble is your enemy. Any old piece of foam or rubber may make the problem worse but there's lots of anecdotal evidence regarding random stuff that happens to work great. Home Depot shelf liner is one of them.
+1 on audioasylum.com. I'm a member and infrequent poster. No tolerance for trolls so everyone's pretty nice. a good place to find random mat stuff that works.
Stay away from "linear tonearms." Most are electronically controlled and use error correction to move the arm along. Unfortunately, the arm needs error before it moves. This kills your stereo image. The only one I've ever seen work properly is so rare, you will pay eleventy billion dollars for it.
Here it is in action. No electronics. The arm runs along two glass rods that slope just enough to overcome the friction in the tiny bearings. The geometry is so good, you could use a nail for a stylus and still get great sound.
http://benwong.smugmug.com/Musical-Equipments/Tonearm/souther-Linear-tonearm/8309/1138434223_duqHW-L.jpg
Just out of curiousity, when did the "modern" era of stereo equipment begin?
A turntable is on the short-list. I can choose between a Kenwwood integrated amp (from the late 70's) and an Onkyo receiver (from the early/mid 90's); I think I'm safe with either.
But, I'm still curious!
TIA
oldsaw wrote: Just out of curiousity, when did the "modern" era of stereo equipment begin? A turntable is on the short-list. I can choose between a Kenwwood integrated amp (from the late 70's) and an Onkyo receiver (from the early/mid 90's); I think I'm safe with either. But, I'm still curious! TIA
When things stopped being analog.
As a rule of thumb when it moved away from 2ch. This also kind of coincides with when CD's started taking over... so mid-late 80's (in my experience)
Any decently high end gear from the late 70's/early 80's is likely to have a reasonable phono stage (my late 80's Onkyo is the latest that I owned that did... but it's also about the latest 2ch gear I owned).
I can tell you the phono stage in my THX-certified home theater unit is so bad you could find yourself actually believing that digital is better sound quality! ;-)
Technics 1200 with a Ortofon cartridge.
May not have the sound quality that audiophiles look for, but hey if that's what you want a vinyl record won't give it to you anyway.
1200's are also pretty damn durable and parts are readily available. There's a reason they are THE go to turntable for DJ's.
Makes my happy I've held on to that old VU-metered Kenwood. The Onkyo can fill other purposes.
Try it out... if it still used the same stage as mine from a few years earlier it could be fine...
Looking at the link for the Rotel TT got me all nostalgic. I have a similar Rotel upstairs in the attic...complete except for the belt!
Where does one look for things like belts and cartridges nowadays??
Still companies that specialize in it... lots of them on Ebay. Some will still send you audio-porn catalogs. ;-)
If you browse the forums you get an idea of where like-minded folks are buying stuff and when a particular vendor has an unusually good deal on a specific cartridge... that's how I bought the one I'm using now (was NLA and a vendor found a stash)...
Jerry From LA wrote: Once you have that squared away, a quality turntable is fully manual and uses belt drive (direct drive is junk sound-wise) to isolate the motor fully from the platter.
Oh my.
There are great sounding tables of each design. Shoot, some great sounding rim drives. I recently put my SL 1200 back in service. It's an outstanding table. A good direct drive will sound better than a poor belt drive. And there are some very good direct drive tables. Vintage direct drive Denon tables are really good. Sony made some great direct drive tables as well. Of course, the SL 1200 I mentioned above.
I agree with people who say you get much better bang for the buck with a good vintage table. Much better to buy locally if you can- craigslist is a good place to look. I've heard horror stories about TT shipping. It's really hard to pack a TT well.
Marty! wrote: May not have the sound quality that audiophiles look for, but hey if that's what you want a vinyl record won't give it to you anyway.
Depends on which audiophile you ask. They're easy to mod and properly set up they sound great. These guys are a great source for ideas:
http://www.kabusa.com/frameset.htm?/1200bld.htm
wcelliot wrote: So for about a $500 investment, I have a good solid table. Frankly, at the original $200 investment it was at least 90% as good as it is now... so if you start off with a solid unit, you're already way ahead.
This entire post is excellent. This bit in particular if you don't want to spend a load of money. That's about the price point where you can start to find a pretty decent table and are up the chain of cost/quality just about to enter the diminishing returns neigborhood.
Wow, WAY more info than I was expecting. Thanks!
fast_eddie_72 wrote: Much better to buy locally if you can- craigslist is a good place to look. I've heard horror stories about TT shipping. It's really hard to pack a TT well.
That's what I was hoping to do. After I searched craigslist and posted this, I called a friend of mine who's a bit of an audiophile to see if he know of anything locally. He said, "I wish you would have called me a few days ago, I just put a nice vintage Yamaha on ebay!" He told me that if I end up buying it he'd knock $10 off since he won't have to box it. So I'm watching that auction now, and I'm going to scour the second hand shops this weekend.
I still have my old Thorens turntable from the late 1970s...they're very good, if you are looking for brand names to search for.
Eddie, as you can tell, I'm an extremely opinionated guy when it comes to this subject. That's because I'm an aurally oriented person. I go through the world ears first.
If a belt drive turntable doesn't sound as good as a d-d, there is some other aspect of the design that is bad. I was only talking about the relative merits of the drive systems.
Another poster wrote about how durable a specific unit is/was. As far as durability goes, we're not hammering nails with the thing. DJs have different criteria. They're using turntables to create sound rather than reproduce it. On a ten point turntable list, ruggedness is number 11. I don't ever remember back-cueing a Theolonius Monk record on my stereo.
Another poster wondered why it was worth it when CDs are better. Actually, CDs have the potential to be better. They are already better in noise and channel separation. Unfortunately, the sampling rate of the current format is not as good as the analog information on a disc. So you have to decide which criteria is most important for you.
I've made my living in sound and spent years of my life in studios and live on the road. I'll get a Hammond B-3 sound that'll knock you on your butt.
Also, +1 on the Thorens turntables. They're still reasonable, the tonearms have decent geometry and it's a good mass-produced unit so there's still some good ones out there.
Okay, yes, I'm too overheated by this thread. I gotta go to the boneyard to replace two brake caliper bolts I lost from my old SAAB 900. Need to be back in time for work tonight.
+1 on CDs.
Basically, the better your system gets, the better analog gets and the worse CDs sound... because all your system can do is reproduce what's on the recording and there is simply more info available on an analog recording... you just have to get through the mechanical process used to get to it.
Better systems reveal more signal on analog recordings and reveal more gaps (sampling and frequency) in digital ones. But in casual listening, the CD will seem to sound better because of the "cleaner" sound.
SACD's are much much better... but not yet widely available.
But so many people now listen to nothing but mp3s (which are not only digital but badly compressed) of digitally recorded music that a CD recorded from a master analog tape seems downright audiophile quality by comparison.
16vCorey wrote: Wow, WAY more info than I was expecting. Thanks!
recalibrate your expectations. this is the GRM board!
Jerry From LA wrote: Eddie, as you can tell, I'm an extremely opinionated guy when it comes to this subject. That's because I'm an aurally oriented person. I go through the world ears first.
No worries. I know a lot of people are really passionate about the DD vs. belt thing. That's fine. I own several of each. I never claimed to have "golden ears". I just like listening and tinkering with gear. I think I have a pretty good idea what souds good and what doesn't. I have had good results with both types of tables if I've taken the time to set them up right. But it's totally possible you would hear something in it that I don't. And we're probably in it for different things. All depends on what you're after.
My rig is an SL 1200, an old Rotel pre-amp from the 90s, a PP EL84 amp pulled from a Motorola console that I've recapped and such all driving a pair of AR LST2s I refoamed and recapped. I love it and I think it sounds outstanding. But there are certainly better sounding systems. I'm not sure I would enjoy them any more though. Other people would, and for them, my system wouldn't be a good answer. I don't know that my TT sounds any better than my CD player (a Sony DVD player that sounds really good) or that my tube amp sounds any better (or even as good) as a good solid state amp. But I like playing with the turntable and the tubes. It's more fun for me to listen that way.
It's like guys with off road trucks. They couldn't build one I'd like and they would never like any sports car I could come up with. Chasing different things.
Take care,
Ed
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