Is It Time To Sell My Vinyl Rig?

OK, now I understand what you said, and asked, better than initially.

Not comparing Mono to Stereo, it's just that the former thrill of the hunt and find is gone, AND you are streaming happily.

SO, why keep the Vinyl rig?

I now say, keep the LP's, sell the equipment, get the surgery.

IF you ever go back to vinyl, I highly recommend you go for a TT with 2 tonearms, have Mono and Stereo available instantly. 

btw, it was pointed out here, and I find is true: they sound better if you play your Mono LP's thru only one speaker.

The improvements of a Mono cartridge and now a single speaker, is the improvement in the distinction of individual instruments, not imaging, but awareness of the Trombone, trumpet, ...

For me, and I have to suspect others, part of the fun of these older LP's is to hear the greats when they were young, their development thru time, thru various collaborations, the development of what bacame their signature sound ...

I'll say it again for others who have not heard good Mono: the engineering and recording techniques in the late 40's and early 50's were quite good. All the great mono equipment, speaker systems developed after WWII were not to reproduce noise, there is a lot of great mono music! 

If you feel that vinyl is over rated, than you must be doing something wrong...when you get it right, there is no comparison. Ill take a bit of noise to get the warm easy flowing organic naturalness and tubey magic of vinyl. Digital is too sterile sounding to my ears. To be quite honest, most of my records play without much noise at all, very quiet. Analog is a very involving listen. However, it does require work, but I like the challenge. 

@goofyfoot
If you feel that strongly right now about the vinyl gestalt, you might sell just the turntable and phono section but KEEP THE VINYL. 200 LPs won't take up that much space. Just box well and keep in storage. Later if you decide to get back into LPs you'll still have them and you can just buy new hardware. But selling the LPs would mean, if you decided to get another TT, going back onto the hunt to find the favored ones again, if you can find them, and at likely higher prices and/or as re-pressings.Best of luck with your operation.

Happy listening.

@glupson

Ever heard about RARE records?

There are American SOUL 45s from the late 60s - early 80s that goes typically for £300 each nowadays, when sellers spread their sales lists by fax (in the 90’s) some of those records were priced at £5 - £30 max. There are records that goes for £1000+ each!

In the US look for RecordsByMail.com - the largest online retailer of used, vintage and collectible vinyl. The man behind this warehouse filled with millions of records is Mr. Craig Moerer (respected dealer and collector).

In UK it’s John Manship and his raresoulman.co.uk

I’m talking about records that you can’t afford, but record collectors are happy to bid on it (auctions). Pressed on private independent labels in 500 - 3000 copies they have a cult statis today on the Soul Scene. Americans never rated their own music as high as collectors from UK, Europe and Japan. Tons of records were exported from America before your local dealers realized what was that. Extremely rare Soul records in best possible condition are no longer in the USA, they are in Japan and UK for decades.

Years ago when digital (CDs) flooded the market most peope thought Vinyl is garbage, dead format of music etc. They are still terribly wrong and high demand on vinyl is a proof.

Digital is free, you don’t have to pay anything if all you need is a good playlist, all records are on youtube for free. In higher resolution (if needed) people can pay a bit for subscription to streaming. BUT why so many people love vinyl and willing to pay for each record more than you pay for access to entire digital library on some popular streaming services for years!?

I see a majority of responses for keeping the vinyl setup. However that doesn’t quite solve the @goofyfoot problem of needing $1K for his surgery.

I wonder if all of us who hope goofyfoot keeps the TT and phono would be open to the idea of raising $1K? I will be happy to make a donation for our fellow audiophile in need of surgery so he can breathe better, enjoy music and live a healthy life.

Hopefully if any one else is open to doing the same to help the OP out, please contact him privately. I suggest OP to open up an account with ‘go fund me.com’.

https://www.gofundme.com/sign-up