Beginning the Analog Adventure


So I recently moved into a new appartment (and will revise my system accordingly soon) and just hooked up my music hall 2.1 again and it sounds better than ever, well everything in my new room sounds sooo much better...but really what hit me is that I want to move more into the analog direction as my system evolves.

so the question is where I go. right now I have a Music Hall 2.1 tt and rega phono stage running to my krell HTS as a preamp (in preamp mode) and then to krell mono's

I'm going to buy a bunch more vinyl either way, but should I upgrade my phono stage and TT now...and if so what should I look at.

thinking a price range of 500 to 1000 and am very willing to purchase used.

thanks for the input...my hi-fi store dosen't deal too much with analog

-Steve
stapimp

Thank you all for your responses...definetely will take your advice and chill on purchasing new equipment for awhile.

as for the DIY projects where can I find plans to build my own phonostage and RCM? I can hold my own with a soldering iron and have access to high precision machining facilites (the benefits of being an MIT student)

thanks again

-Steve
Stapimp,

For the RCM, just google "DIY record cleaning machine". You'll get several good hits. You will see that you can go mild to wild. I have a picture posted of my own under my system. It was made with an old Hoover vacuum and I spin the MDF platter by hand. I based it on the RCM shown on the teres audio site. Nuthin' fancy but it gets the records clean. But I would advise just buying cleaning solution. There are some pretty good home brews, but I believe that the Record Research Labs products are the best, easiest and safest to use. AIVS also makes a great product for really grundgy records.
If you are interested in phono kits try http://audionotekits.espyderweb.net/, http://www.bottlehead.com/ and http://www.hagtech.com/. There are a few others around, but I have personal experience with these companies and their kits and customer service are first rate.

For scratch building best is just to do a google search.

Regards
Paul