Starter Turntable

Turntables are the best; but only if you've got big bucks & patience to set up correctly. If not, your local retailer is giving you good advice.

Jump in with both feet! You'll love it. Lots of beginner choices. New or Used. On Audiogon or on Ebay or local classifieds.

I like to recommend starting with a Rega P2 or similar, a basic cartridge (under $100) and a simple phono preamp to plug into your existing stereo (which most likely doesn't have a phono pre-amp). At new prices you could buy these three items for under $800.

If that's too much, look at used stuff and you could probably find all three for under $500.

I'd say a first step is to visit http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/vinyl/bbs.html and do a lot of searching in the archives. Looking for opinions of the best starter tables, the best low cost phono cartridges and the best low cost phono pre-amplifiers.

Lots of folks will answer this question with a confusing aray of other advise. Some will say to buy a 20 year old used Thorens, or build your own turntable and pre-amp and even that you can't get into vinyl without buying a record cleaning machine.

I say, keep it simple. Do your research. Make your choices and enjoy!

Paul Green
PS. Both new and used vinyl records are available on line and in stores. Thirft stores and yard sales are great places to find really cheap old records.

My experience is that you'll need to spend around $1000 minimum to get an LP playback setup (table, cartridge, phono preamp) that will compare favorably with a CD based playback. As for LPs you either buy used for cents each, but set aside lots of time to search through them, or you pay similar money per record as for CDs to get new LPs. i.e. you spend money or time ... no easy ways in.

If I didn't have a collection of LPs I would not bother to start one. Spend the money on a better CD player and/or more CDs.

If you really must buy a record player then a used Rega planar 2/3 with a Rega Elys is about as simple as it gets, and will sound pretty good. For better sound, but a more difficult setup dump the rega cartridge for a denon dl-160.

You may not need big bucks, but some bucks is necessary. General patience and some luck finding bargains helps too. The sticking point I have with your quest is "what will be a good one (album) to start with". There is no starter album and the key here is: we don't call them record COLLECTIONS for nothin'. Find some other people where you live (if you can) with analog systems, see what they have, how it sounds, and ask questions like how did they get where they are system-wise (how many upgrades). Lastly, ask if you know them well enough about the approx monetary investment. I'll tell you I have a modest system worth about 3.5 grand (I bought it all except the cartridge used and spent about $1800. This is only for the TT-cart-bookshelf speakers-
2-channel amp and preamp-and cabling. This is a maodest system. This is not a pool you're thinking of jumping into, it's an ocean. Good luck.

It's not worth it, unless you plan to have albums that are not available on CD. You'll be better off spending your money on a belt drive transport/player and have it modded. Besides, chances are you'll end up with one of those crappy belt drive TTs which are touted as 'audiophile' decks. Take it from someone who's got 900 LPs vs 200 CDs...and a modified quartz locked, direct drive TT.