Not sure I agree with the advice to buy new. But either way, you’ll want a reputable dealer who can work on it, and make sure your azimuth and vertical tracking are set up correctly.
At at one point, it was thought that bet drives were more noise isolating vs that of direct drives. But that was as much the actual engineering as the method of turning the platter. Fine examples of each. Arguably there’s less maintenance with a direct drive, but I wouldn’t know. I got my belt driven table when I was 13 and it’s still producing great sound.
A moving magnet cartridge ridge will give you a much easier interface to start with. Moving coils introduce new technical issues, but the manufacturers of better cartridges today tend to focus on the coil design. Not sure why that became a fad but it did.
Good luck.
Oh, a good record cleaner and an anti-static surfactant such as in Groove Glide will do wonders to eliminate much surface noise. As someone who also streams a lot of music, I can’t deal with more than the occasional pop etc.
At at one point, it was thought that bet drives were more noise isolating vs that of direct drives. But that was as much the actual engineering as the method of turning the platter. Fine examples of each. Arguably there’s less maintenance with a direct drive, but I wouldn’t know. I got my belt driven table when I was 13 and it’s still producing great sound.
A moving magnet cartridge ridge will give you a much easier interface to start with. Moving coils introduce new technical issues, but the manufacturers of better cartridges today tend to focus on the coil design. Not sure why that became a fad but it did.
Good luck.
Oh, a good record cleaner and an anti-static surfactant such as in Groove Glide will do wonders to eliminate much surface noise. As someone who also streams a lot of music, I can’t deal with more than the occasional pop etc.