New Vinyl Setup

I'm sure there are other tables in the same range as the 1400 that are very good. I offer it because that is one, along with a Basis 2100 and 2500, that I've spent some time with. The 2100 used a Vector arm and latter I used that same Vector and a Graham 2.2 on the 2500. I had purchased the 1400 used here in the ads to use until my Gavia was delivered, say about 10 months altogether. (Not that the Gavia took that long, but I sold the 2500 to help the funding issue.) Even though I knew the quality and performance of Basis products I was very pleasantly surprised with the 1400. That table had a modified RB300. The 1400's usually go for $800-$1000 used. If you compare that to the cost of say a new MMF-7 (not picking on Music Hall here, but I owned one of those as well for a while) then there is so much more offered from the Basis. Better bearing, motor, etc. I suspect that VPI, SME, etc would also have models that would do well.

Doug makes a great point. The only real sin is to buy high-end and never take the time to learn how to improve the setup.

Tvad,

I wish I had some good suggestions to add to Dan's, but we followed his "don't buy too cheap" plan several years ago, with a vengeance. ;-)

We went directly from a 25-year-old mid-fi rig that had been collecting dust for years to a Teres 265/OL Silver/Shelter 901 ($5K-ish). No baby steps!

That mad, Kierkegaardian leap of faith was richly inspired by Twl, to whom we will be forever grateful, and of course it worked out well for us. Given the price structure of Teres I could have sold that rig off without losing more than $1K or so if we'd decided the whole vinyl thing wasn't for us.

That didn't happen of course. As you know, we've since gone the other way, from boldness to lunacy and beyond.

Doug

P.S. It is indeed easy to make mistakes when getting into vinyl, but IMO the serious mistakes are more likely to be poor equipment selection or poor equipment matching than poor setup and adjustment. The latter is easily rectified after all. The former can really mess with your head, cause you to chase the wrong "fixes" and cost alot of unnecessary money. IOW, Tvad's question is a very important one and Dan's "don't buy too cheap" is a good start toward success.

Doug, I must give credit to TWL as well. He once gave out this advice about buying higher up the first time. Unfortunately for me it was well into my 'table journey. But looking back I can really appreciate now what he was saying.

KThomas,
I'm not sure what your budget is, but a safe option would be a Rega P3 (new or used)with a Rega cartridge. Rega carts feature a 3 hole mounting system which makes alignment foolproof. Other than setting antiskate, there's no other adjustments to make. It's about a close to plug and play as you're going to get, and this setup will give you a pretty good taste of what quality vinyl playback is like. Could you get better sound for less money? Sure. Could you get better sound for less money and no tweaking, adjusting, modifying, futzing? Probably not.