Clueless Analog Newbie, Looking to Buy

Go out to Amazon and get a Audio-Technica AT-PL120 turntable for about $175, order a Audio-Technica AT440MLa from LPGear.com for about $120 and have a respectable setup for less than $400. For now, you will be more than happy with this set up.

Analog does not have to be expensive. It *can* be *very* expensive, but it does not have to be this way. You just happen to post on a site where people trade components that cost way more than my first car (or second car, or even my current BMW, for that matter).

After you start buying LPs, send me an e-mail with the bands / LPs you buy...I'd be interested in knowing. Also, if you need help setting up your table once you get it, shoot me an e-mail and I'll help you out.

Yahoo! Good for Nrenter!!!

Before I had read through this entire thread, I was getting ready to recommend the Audio Technica PL-120 as well, but Nrenter beat me to it, and named the ideal vendor as well. Amazon's current price on this turntable is $161.78

At its price nothing can touch it, and for all the yammering on this thread about the Rega P1 and P2, this Audio Technica beats it all to hell on build quality and ease of operation. AT is able to offer up so much more value for the money thanks to more automated manufacturing (to very close tolerances) and the economy of scale that results.

Go to this page of Tone Publications' online magazine and download Issue 11. In there, Jeff Dorgay, the publisher/editor, reviews the Audio-Technica and gives it a very favorable review as a $300 machine. Now you can get it for a little over half that. Jeff and the others at Tone have fairly rarified tastes, and typically listen to multi-thousand-dollar belt-drive 'tables in signal chains of handmade electronics. Yet Jeff saw the inherent value and performance of this AT 'table.

Another cartridge--the one that Jeff settled on with this 'table--is the Ortofon 2M Red (or the Blue version if you care to spring for it). The 2M Red is roughly the same price as the AT 440MLa; it's just another alternative. Anyway, the PL-120 plus the 2M Red come to under $270, and I think you'd get a lot of enjoyment out of that combo.

I know...I know...

Some people make this far more complicated than it really needs to be.

04-22-09: Nrenter
I know...I know...

Some people make this far more complicated than it really needs to be.

Especially when you consider that BILLIONS of people enjoyed LPs from 1949 to the mid-'80s, of which 90% played their beloved music on turntables nowhere near as good as the PL-120.

No one said (or, at least I didn't) that a budget system can't be enjoyable. But let's not forget the ancillary stuff necessary for it to *be* enjoyable-especially relative to a ceedee reference. Stylus brush. VTF scale. Record cleaning brush. The tools, knowledge and discipline to learn to align your cart. Some way of cleaning the records, particularly if the OP is planning on buying used. LPs are valuable, so some good sleeves for storage. Oh yeah, that brings up the pesky issue of software-how much of that 400.00 budget will go to buying some music? A library of, say, 12 albums is going to get old really, really quick.

Yes, people have been enjoying records for close to a century, but how many of those people would choose ceedee over vinyl on a mid-fi system? Who knows, but if the marketplace is any indication, about 99%-and as much as I like vinyl, I'd probably be in that percentile. If I was in the OP's position and was gifted with a large record collection, it would be fun to buy a cheap record player and spin some tunes. But I'm pretty sure I'd go back to digital for the best sound.

And that was, after all, the OP's initial question.