Trying to get in to vinyl, turntable suggestions?

Burnsy1, to answer your question, Rega makes several different tables in their line, so yes, there is plenty of room to upgrade in that line. I personally have the one in the middle of the line, the P5. That is their table in the $1500 range, and with their TT-PSU it is indeed one of the very best options in that price range, as Zenblaster says.

As far as comparisons to the Technics, the Technics are indeed built like a tank. They also can sound like one... :) Seriously, I must agree to disagree with Johnny - most of the audiophiles I know personally are also professional musicians (classical and jazz), and all of us who have heard the two tables (I have owned both) have greatly preferred the Regas for their soundstaging and better instrumental and vocal timbre resolution. You hear more of what the original recording space sounded like, and greater variety of color in the tones of the players. The Technics, in my experience, tends to be preferred by people who listen mainly to rock or other types of mostly electronic music - those tables tend to homogenize different recordings rather than bringing out differences, another reason they are preferred by DJs as well. I am not saying there is anything necessarily wrong with this, by the way, different strokes for different folks - many audiophiles prefer to make all of their recordings sound as much the same as they can in their systems. I am not saying the Technics are bad tables by any means - it all depends on what your priorities are, and those tables do what they are designed to do very well. There is plenty of room in this hobby for people of all tastes and preferences. While I will crack a joke here and there, I do try to honestly describe what I hear when posting on this site, whatever the subject may be. Since I am not a very good writer, sometimes my comments are taken much differently than they were meant, and I certainly take my share of the blame for that. As I have said before, I sure am glad a became a musician instead of a writer!

04-21-09: Learsfool
Since I am not a very good writer, sometimes my comments are taken much differently than they were meant, and I certainly take my share of the blame for that. As I have said before, I sure am glad a became a musician instead of a writer!

How right you are! If you hadn't written this clarification, I wouldn't have realized that your bigotry against direct drive turntables also extends to the people who listen to them.

Thanks again for all the input so far. I have a couple questions maybe you can help me out with.

If the technics has a more homogenized, or quiet sound as some have described, but can also be upgraded in many ways...do the upgrades not impact this type of sound? If so any thoughts on what it is with the technics that is responsible for the perceived sound difference?

Also, any thoughts on the VPI 19 MK2 that Mred mentions?

Also, any thoughts on the VPI 19 MK2 that Mred mentions?

What kind of arm and/or cartridge come with it?

I currently have that table up and running with a Audioquest PT-9 arm and Goldring 1042 cartridge. (about $1k for the arm/cart combp) and I am having a good time with it. I did have a problem with the belt slipping and stylus drag making a mess of things when I first got the table. A new belt and some fooling around with the height of the plinth to base has things pretty well under control. These tables come in 2 parts, the base which houses the motor and the plinth which holds the platter, a plastic/rubber belt goes from the top of the motor around the platter. There is no adjusting the speed of this set-up so your motor better be right on or everything else is for not, this presents the biggest challenge for this table imo. If I decide to keep this I am going to have to invest about $1k in a VPI SDS speed control which dial these motors in perfectly. I sold a tricked out KAB Technics table about 4 months ago to try this belt drive out. I really loved the Technics but thought that I would try something different. What I have found is that the VPI sounds great when everything is working perfectly and the speed is correct but on a complicated piece of music, where the grooves of the record are creating more drag on the stylus, I hear the change in pitch, and it drives me crazy, that;s all I hear instead of the music. I never had that problem with the Technics. Would I trade my VPI for a Technics, I am not sure at this point. The VPI can be great on some albums, some I can't even listen to. The Technics is very good with all of my albums. I am glad that I had the Technics first as it is a much easier table to use, more straight forward, less fiddling around out of the box.
If you decide on the Technics stay away from used tables from ebay, dj tables get beat to shit with ashes, coke (both kinds) and a general rough life for a sensitive piece of equipment. Start with new or from someone established here on Agon

Good luck and have some fun with it but remember it's all about listening to music.

04-21-09: Burnsy1
If the technics has a more homogenized, or quiet sound as some have described, but can also be upgraded in many ways...do the upgrades not impact this type of sound? If so any thoughts on what it is with the technics that is responsible for the perceived sound difference?

Out of the box, the Technics sounds compressed, as do most low cost turntables. The thing about the Technics is that some very simple tweaks open up its dynamic range. The Technics has excellent rotational accuracy, signal-to-noise ratio, and build quality and close tolerances of a much more expensive turntable. The downside is that its design was frozen in 1981 before vibration control and isolation were as well developed as they are now.

The first thing is, the tonearm wire in most of the SL12x0 machines is substandard for an audiophile piece of equipment. It imparts the dark, closed-in sound that's often described. But this can be fixed a couple of ways. The easy one is to get an SL1210 M5G, an upscale model, that comes stock from the factory with OFC wire throughout. The capacitance for the entire run of cable out to the RCA plugs is a fairly low 100pF, which is a good match with most MM cartridges. The other way to do it is to buy a lower level SL12x0 and have Kevin rewire it with high grade Cardas cable for $169. The cable upgrade (or selection of the M5G) opens up the sound, making it light and airy up top and with similar imaging to other turntables.

Second, get a better mat. The mat on a Technics has to do two things--damp the platter and isolate the record and cartridge from the mechanicals spinning it from below. There are several mats out there that will improve things. The cheapest is the Technics Supermat which weighs over a pound and which kabusa.com sells for about $20. Others have been happy with Herbie's Way Excellent Mat or the one from Iron Audio. This improves inner detail, lowers the noise floor, improves dynamic range, and lowers congestion on more complex musical passages.

Third, replace the feet with something that will drain the vibrational energy out of the turntable base and isolate the turntable from in-room vibrations. There are a couple of approaches to this: You can get brass cones that transfer energy out of the turntable to whatever its sitting on, or cushiony feet that absorb the energy, or a combination that does both. The top end replacement feet are the Isonoe Footers available from KABUSA for about $200 the set including screw-in footers, glass coasters, and sorbothane boots to go over the assembly. A second method is brass cones. You can get the Threaded Heavyfeet from Mapleshade Records for about $160/pair, or take the cheap way out (I did) and get the Dayton Speaker threaded cones from www.parts-express.com for $21/set. The threads are a perfect match for the originals. If you go with brass cones, you will for sure want to put the turntable on an isolation platform. I use the Dayton brass cones seated on a thick butcher block cutting board, which is then isolated from the shelf by something absorbent. I've variously used Vibrapods and silicone gel pads from an office supply shop.

The cumulative effect of addressing noise and vibration transforms the turntable, lowering the noise floor at the low end and raising the feedback resistant volume at the other. It also makes the sound cleaner and clearer in the middle.

Two last tweaks are the kabusa.com tonearm fluid damper and a Sumiko or LPGear headshell. The fluid damper is $150 and is easily installed in about 30 minutes. Set up properly, this lowers the resonant peak of the cartridge/arm resonant frequency and enables the tonearm to track hideously warped records without jumping the groove.

The better headshell damps resonances better and raises the effective mass of the tonearm slightly, making it a better match with many medium-compliance cartridges that came along after the Technics was designed.

When I first brought the Technics home my wife could easily hear the dynamic compression, but with the way I have it set up now it easily equals the dynamic range of the same recordings on CD and has all the clarity of a CD, but with the higher resolution and more organic microdynamics that analog brings.

I also use the KAB rubber record grip at $25. I've found it helps thin records sound like thick ones, and lowers the surface noise level a little bit.