I'm New To Vinyl - Which Turntable Should I Buy?

Don't be discouraged by the Record Cleraning Machine cost. You can get a perfectly good one from Audio Advisor for $239. Whether or not you get into vinyl, it sounds like you have a problematic room with those dimensions and might want to look into room treatments as well. Good luck, Dave

If you're willing to max your budget, there are a LOT of options for you, most of which I am not privileged to know enough about to advise on.

I am getting into analog and picked up a used Music Hall MMF-7 and am very pleased with it. It is a highly regarded table, especially at the used price - around $600 for table, arm, and cartridge. It is very musical and warm (I run it through an Arcam AVR200 integrated.) As an advantage, it is pretty much plug and play. There are not really any tweaks you can do easily, except for clamps and matts. And if vinyl turns out not to be your thing, you can probably re-sell a used one at almost the same price.

Non-upgradability can be a down side, though, if you catch a real bad case of vinylitis. A comparable table in quality and (sometimes) price is the Rega P3, on which you can do tonearm upgrades.

Keep in mind the magnitude of the undertaking - building a collection, cleaning the collection, dickering with the arm and the stylus. It may be best to try one of these, save yourself some $$ for albums and a record cleaning meachine, and then, by the time you've spent the whole budget, you'll know whether you like it so much that you chould have spent it all on the able alone.

Good listening.

You need someone that can support you until you learn a lot more about the whole analog front end. Find a local Hi-end dealer that has extensive experience with turntables, tonearms and cartridges including setup and adjustments/tuning. Turntables are not as easy to use as CD players.

Look for a turntable with a suspended subchassis to filter out external vibrations, such as Linn, VPI, SOTA. I owned a SOTA Star Sapphire for 18 years.

$2,000 dollars? Ok, I'm going to assume audiophile used will work for you and that you want the 'tried and true'. Well, here's some ways to get away with 2k...(hey, that rhymed...neat)

1. VPI HW 19 MK IV/SAMA/PLC. For an arm, choose a BritAudio 1 or a Linn Ekos. Phonostage is a Bottlehead seduction and the cart is a ClearAudio Aurum Classics Wood.

2. VPI Scout/JMW 10/Dynavector 10x5. Phonostage is either the seduction or a used Lehmann Black Cube

3.Sota Comet with an RB-250. Detach the 250 and sent it to BritAudio.com for a JA Michel Counterweight and Incognito wiring upgrade. Purchase a used Acoustic Research PH-3 and a Shelter 501 Mk II.

Let me know if you need more,

Marty A. Nickison II

Why would you own such an expensive system and only budget 2K for table/arm/cart.? Throw the phono stage that you will need in there and the budget looks even smaller. You can get pretty good sound in this price range, but you are likely to be disappointed in how it performs in the context of your system. If you just want to dip your toes in the water to see if it's for you, why not borrow a cheap rig from a friend. Or if your local dealer has a Rega P3 and something like a Project or Creek phono stage he would loan you for a couple of weeks, you could find out if it's your cup of tea or not. Then up that budget to be more in line with the rest of your components and you can buy a great setup that you will enjoy now and still have room to make smaller improvements. But in my opinion, that 2K will be wasted if you either

a) decide vinyl is not for you or

b) you want to reach higher up the ladder right away.

In both scenarios you will sell what you just bought at a loss.