Help educate Analogue rookie

I would agree with Onhwy61 that you really need to think about the cost of acquiring a good LP collection if you don't already have one. This is you're biggest issue. Good hardware is easily available. In fact, there are better turntables and cartridges available today than there have ever been. Research music direct, acoustic sounds, red trumpet, Ebay and Gemm to see if the stuff you want is available at a price you will pay. New issue LP's are worthless if not completely analog mastered (many are not). You might as well buy a CD.
Finally, don't pay attention to Porizob above who doesn't know what he's talking about. I have hundreds of used LP's from the 50's and 60's with no pop's and clicks. You might hear a little surface noise between the tracks but on the tracks, any slight surface noise is completely overwhelmed by the lucious sound of the music. If complete silence is your criteria for quality, just turn off your system and it will sound perfect!

I'm more into vinyl now than ever, and I'm just starting over. My first record was Sonny- hey, I was a kid! Then I bought The Doors. I was the proud owner of a Clarion turntable, worked all summer and bought some more albums. It wasn't until I had numerous debates with friends at Garfield H.S. in East LA that I finally saw the light and started buying Buffalo Springfield, Cream, Zappa, Ry Cooder and others. My friends were, and still are David Hidalgo, Conrad, Louie, Frank Gonzales, Skunk...
Then after many years, early 80s, I went to the dark side, or I should say the harsh side. I liked the convenience of the CD and I thought (as I still do) that the sound was pretty good. But one thing I missed was the ritual of playing an album. First, look at the cover with great anticipation. Most of the time the covers are a real piece of art. (I'd be glad to send a photo of some albums on display in my listening room- my poker playing friends love it). Second, pick a side. Place it on the platter, take your brush and let the recored rotate underneath it, careful not to place so much pressure you slow the platter. Be gentle. Drop the arm and hurry to your chair, couch, next to your buddies, sweet thang, or maybe your dog (before he takes up the whole sofa). Take a sip and/or a puff. Then listen and hopefully groove by tapping your foot, bobbing and weaving at the texture of Jimi's sound, or Aretha's pained pleads, or Janis' ripped heart. After that first side, the excitement usually leads me to another LP, another artist, a different genre, just something else, because like a drug, you don't want it to end. Perhaps Clapton and the Dominos are just so good, that nothing else will match their intensity, so you choose something mellow- maybe Coltrane to send you off to a different world, way deep into the galaxy. But, your back in your room as the record ends to seek out a different one.
I like albums because you don't listen to an hour+ of one artist, you listen to maybe 40 minutes and change the record to stay engaged! I like the way my mind is going through the motions of selecting another LP as the stylus approaches the leadoff. Sometimes as I grab the next cover and I place the record on the nitty gritty, I change my mind and I must hear Ella (wish I had Diana Krall on vinyl). Maybe the only thing that will end this listening session is the baddest of them all- Django. Or perhaps, the Budapest Quartet doing Eine Kleine Nacht Music. I can imagine Rhassan digging that!
There is a smoothness to vinyl, the sound is not pins and needles, but waves of peaks to the heavens, and, dips into darkness. I would love to replace my Music Hall 5 SE, only because I can hear the potential for more involvement. I replaced an old Pioneer turntable which i purchased in the mid 70s. I replaced the stylus 3 times. I gave it to a friend after I got the M Hall 6 months ago. I'm at a loss of where to go, what turntable to get- any suggestions are welcome- $2500 is my max.
I now have over 200 Lps, most purchased within a year. I buy at estate sales, Goodwill, etc. Look for Lps that are in good condition. Kurt_tank (above)makes some realistic points to consider.
I use a BAT 3i (tubes, phono, remote), Aragon amp, Avalon Speakers, Music Hall table. It sends me, it moves me. Find a friend like mine who has over 2000 albums, most in VG+ condition, and lets me take 50 at a time. My favorites at the moment are Little Richard- King Richard, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Pure Ella, Duke Ellington, Love, Professor Long Hair, Flying Buttito Brothers.
Don't let the pops and clicks bother you, a few ain't bad. Of course you don't want too many. Hope this isn't too long and fragmented, but I'm not listening to any records at the moment.

An interesting question, starting LP collecting from scratch. Most of us at least had something of an initial collection. In my case about 300, now up to 1500 over 4 years. To start with the easy bit(no not that easy), The turntable/tonearm. As others have pointed out, the irony is, as new record issues have dropped, record replay has blossomed. There are almost too many good, reasonably cheap, turntables around. VPI, Nottingham and Rega, spring to mind; I also agree, go 2nd hand, if its a mistake, you should be able to sell without too much loss. The cartridge ideally new, but 2nd hand if from someone you know and trust.
The phono stage is important too, but need'nt be ruinously expensive, again 2nd hand is a good start. The EAR 834, Trichord Dino, Dynavector P75 are all good and a good starting point.
The difficulty to me is the software. Others may disagree, but I don't think there is enough new vinyl to justify buying into a new replay medium( the reason I have not invested in DVD a or SACD, good though they sound) I may be wrong, but I don't see there being a great explosion in new vinyl releases. Therefore you have to look to 2nd hand and I also agree, that means investing in a solid record cleaning system. The contoversial bit is that I don't think there is a great supply of 2nd hand rock and Jazz records of good quality. The ones I have found are often in poor condition. There undoubtedly is of Classical. Certainly in the UK, there is a constant supply of near mint vinyl reappearing on the market. This largely seems to be from large collections of music lovers who have passed away, unfortunately. Thats where my collection will end up sometime I am sure.
To sum up, I would recommend anyone getting into vinyl from scratch, if you are a classical music lover and are prepared to hunt around for the software. Choose 2nd hand hardware, from the plethora of good reliable makes, so if you change your mind, you can sell without too much loss. My collection has expanded from 300 to 1500, but nearly all Classical, because that is what I can find at a reasonable price.

In fact, in my area, there is truly an explosion of new vinyl - two large shops dedicated to new vinyl with small used sections, three CD stores with vinyl sections that double in size every few months now (a shop which dedicated itself to CD years ago now has gone from one lonely row one year ago to eight at last count), all offering classic re-issues of Hendrix etc. to new pop/rock, techno/DJ, garage and re-issue jazz, and all at reasonable prices overall too. I'm not sure how you would track these down David, but I'd say it's time to start some Googling. As to used, there are many shops which specialize in used vinyl in excellent condition, at an average price of $6 a pop, including jazz and blues! Then there are the Neighbourhood Services/Salvation Army type places where LPs are usually not in good condition, but even here classical is usually in good shape, classical music lovers taking better care of their LPs overall; and since rock/pop albums are extremely common, good examples do exist in these shops, though harder to find among all the trash. My own collection is still in boxes in storage waiting for a better home, but in the meantime in close to two years I have amassed close to 400 records from good to excellent shape, of very good music, including rock/pop, classical, old classics/movie soundtracks, jazz and blues. And probably at an average price of $2 a pop. Only a very few of these required cleaning by a machine, my trusty Discwasher brush doing most of the duties used dry, a couple of seconds at most before I drop the needle in the groove. Now I am working on compiling a collection of new rock/pop and classics, having discovered a few very worthwhile new bands on vinyl, including two of my recent favourites/discoveries, Big Boss Man and The Notwist! There IS life after vinyl, and it's on the way up! The Notwist in particular (Neon Golden) is a superb recording and a superb pressing on superbly incredible vinyl, I'm off to buy the entire collection on vinyl tomorrow!

Finaly, I've had a bug up my *ss lately. It kills me to see people who are starting with no knowledge smack-dab in the middle of the High End with a VPI Scout (for instance), who have no idea what to listen for, no idea whether their rig sounds good or not or is properly matched/set-up, and so often announce their disillusionment due to their lack of development/skills/discrimination. It also kills me to see people being advised to start at this level, very common in this forum. Sound reproduction is too complex to simply throw money at it and decide "I want something really good and by-pass the lower rungs," or to be advised to do so. How many out there can properly set-up a cartridge, the least and most fundamental of jobs, don't even talk about suspensions and outboard motors? What happened to starting with a reasonably-priced simple turntable at a few hundred? Here's a lesson for newbies who grew up in sterile and disatisfying digital environments (even if they didn't know it, they NEED hands-on involvement, the reason for hobbies and gardening): Even in the heyday of vinyl when we ALL had record players and CD did not exist, everyone I ever knew started with something like a Rega or Revolver turntable at a few hundred when we first graduated from a mass-produced pieces of crap and discovered there was such a thing as sound quality, and we had all spent our entire lives spinning vinyl! And we STILL made several mistakes! Better to start with the "first" serious turntable, have to start the learning curve somewhere, and here the Regas (and Technics SL1200) are excellent, as they are simple, reliable, and musical with long histories to support them, and of high quality. So, for the novice, Rega turntables are extremely easy to set up, no tricksy outboard motors and VTA matters to worry about, no complicated suspensions and set-up, hit the button and they spin (no need to shove the platter), and are very good and very elegant, the P3, due to its tonearm, good enough for some quite good MCs to boot. As you go up the ladder of cost, so too do complexities, better to start in Simpleville. The Gram Slee Amp2SE is an excellent phono preamp despite its low cost (I was very impressed, and its most obvious attribute is musicality!), and match a HO Benz ACE phono cartridge or Denon DL-160, high-output MCs which should sound fabulous on the Rega RB300 tonearm and via the Gram. After falling in love with the sound of vinyl and getting used to the mechanics and the various issues of sound quality, and learning where our tastes lie before spending several thousand rather than after, THEN we are in a good position to start considering more complex/expensive turntables and tonearms to suit our now-formed tastes and knowledge, and so in the long run save money and enjoy ourselves while learning, rather than lose money and experience frustrations by simply taking an expensive shot in the dark. And the Regas have very high re-sale value to boot, so the cost of an education is very low for the knowledge gained, both in terms of cash and in terms of effort. Now I'm off to the record store, which is exactly next to the other new-vinyl shop, which is exactly next to one of the good used vinyl shop (one-two-three!), to pick up those The Notwist albums, yippee!

Do you like to go to garage sales sometimes in the summer? Do you like to poke around on ebay every once in a while? Do you like hanging out at record stores with all the hipsters and their complicated shoes? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you're a prime candidate for vinyl. Finding, collecting, and playing vinyl is not a pain in the ass--it's fun, lots of fun. Enjoy.