Turntables?

[Frank Dernie]

For another example, I excluded all tables that lack a cover with hinges. If it doesn't come with a cover then I need to buy an after market one, which are expensive, ugly and large, and I'd have to take it off find somewhere to put it while I play records. What do people with VPI, Clearaudio and all the others without a cover do? Dust them twice a week?

I had one made for my coverless TT by a local lexan bonding company. I drew it, they made it.
It is a PITA to lift off and heavy, I went a bit overboard on thickness, but not as bad as dusting it.

 

[Midwest Blade]

I am probably 95% digital or streaming but still listen to a few albums once in awhile on my main system. I have a vintage Technics Sl-1800 that I picked up for $50, needed to make some repairs which only cost $100 plus a couple of new cartridges which were $175 in total. It works and serves my needs but I would not buy a vintage turntable unless it was in mint shape. As for new, I would suggest a real dark horse, the Audio Technica AT-LP7, seen and heard this at a show and was pretty impressed. It is not the high end, but definitely a solid mid-fi table. Gives you the ease to swap out cartridges and make adjustments. Just a neat package.

A relative has sworn by his turntable over the past couple of years, I enjoy discussing the pros and cons every time we visit, this year he was streaming his xmas music and confessed it was so much easier, we had a good laugh and enjoyed another egg nog.

 

[renaudrenaud]

Technics SL1200 GR + Schiit Mani + Nagaoka MP-150 - This will compete with anything out there IMO.

Don't forget the Record Doctor V. If getting into vinyl you NEED clean records - This may be the most important part actually.

For cleaning operations I use an ultrasonic system, not intended for this usage but it works.

 

[NTomokawa]

For cleaning operations I use an ultrasonic system, not intended for this usage but it works.

Ultrasonic baths are excellent at breaking off whatever is resting deep in the grooves. Just use distilled water and no detergent.

 

[Mr Rick]

Question for the OP. Have we given you any help whatsoever??

 

[Toroid]

After cleaning I also like to put them into a new MoFi inner sleeve. Love those sleeves

 

[Phorize]

For another example, I excluded all tables that lack a cover with hinges. If it doesn't come with a cover then I need to buy an after market one, which are expensive, ugly and large, and I'd have to take it off find somewhere to put it while I play records. What do people with VPI, Clearaudio and all the others without a cover do? Dust them twice a week?

I have a marantz tt 15 s, no dust cover. Very nice turntable but gets dusty as you’d expect. I’m having a vintage turntable built at the moment and it will have a cover.

 

[Phorize]

Question for the OP. Have we given you any help whatsoever??

It seems improbable, nothing is guaranteed to rathole a thread more than a turntable discussion!

 

[anmpr1]

If you know the deck's history (not often possible) I'd have no qualms against buying an old Technics record player. I have one from 1975 (SL 1100a) and another from 2005 (SL-1200 v5) and they both work as new. That said, I also have an even older Garrard Z 100 (1971 or 2) that works as new.

An old record changer is a bit of a project, since you'll need to clean it up, remove a lot of the hardened grease, etc. But it's not something that can't be done if you take your time about it. One thing--it is getting harder to find parts for old Garrards (and probably other makes such as Dual). You might even have to buy a spare wrecked deck and scavenge. Garrard's Synchro-Lab motor appears to be very well built, hpowever rubber idler reduction wheels are getting more and more difficult to find.

 

[The Equalizer]

I bought a Music Hall MMF-2.2 with a preinstalled cartridge for a little over US$400. Now the model number is up to 2.3. At the time, I believe it was the cheapest model Music Hall offered. I think it's made in the same factory as Pro-Ject turntables. The cartridge is a rebranded Goldring, if I recall correctly.

It replaced a fairly cheap linear tracking Technics SL-J33 from the 1980s with an Audio Technica P-mount cartridge. That model scanned the record optically in an attempt to automate jumping to any track - you just press the track number, and boom, there's your track, or most of it it, or some of the previous track added for good measure. The system sort of worked, sometimes, with some records. In any case, the Music Hall sounds better.

At about the same time, I bought the cheapest Nitty Gritty record cleaner, which may have been a more important purchase than the turntable. Most of the records I had on hand were old and on the filthy side. I make my own cleaning solution with about 6 oz. distilled water, 1-2 oz. isopropanol, and a couple of drops of Kodak Photo-Flo wetting agent.

I had considered a Technics SL-1200, but at the time I was making the purchase, it had been discontinued. Also, the advice I got was that you could hear cogging on direct drive turntables and that their main advantage was reliability under heavy use.

 

[SegaCD]

If you don't mind a CD-like experience and buying a fancy, beautiful-sounding JICO stylus to pair to a cheap Audio-Technica AT92e p-mount cartridge, I would wholeheartedly recommend the Technics line of linear trackers. The Technics SL-7/10/15 are the popular ones because they're so small but the SL-Q1 sells for peanuts and has the exact same build quality & functionality, just in a standard (larger) form-factor.

Why?

• They all use the SL-1200MK2 quartz-locked servo platter drive ICs and general circuit design (Verified when I recapped my SL-15)
• As a result, rumble/wow/flutter measurements best most TTs, even many of the huge $20k units with heavy platters: https://www.hifinews.com/content/technics-sl-10-turntable-lab-report (i.e. no cogging that plagued older direct drive turntables)
• The linear tracking mechanism insures minimal inner-groove distortion/tracking error by design (compared to standard S/straight arm turntables).
• The linear tracking arms are extremely short and lightweight even compared to other linear tracking turntables (increasing the effective tonearm dampening and decreasing resonant frequency below audible hearing range (12Hz according to literature). I dare you to get one of these TTs to skip or hop out of a groove!
• Buy a broken one cheap and fix it easily! 95% of these have bad tone arm belts which is a $10/30 min fix. The other 5% have speed control issues and need the main board recapped (which is very straightforward to do compared to most amplifiers/more complex electronics/LT TTs with Biotracing tonearms). Much easier to fix than TTs with bad bearings in the arms or complex mechanical linkages that need to be disassembled and re-lubed.
• All are made out of solid aluminum with the SL-10/15 in particular closing tightly and isolating the cartridge from picking up feedback from your speakers. The SL-10/15 also have a built-in, magnetic record weight "puck" which holds the record in place. This allows the units to be played in any direction, even upside down!

 

[Frank Dernie]

If you don't mind a CD-like experience and buying a fancy, beautiful-sounding JICO stylus to pair to a cheap Audio-Technica AT92e p-mount cartridge, I would wholeheartedly recommend the Technics line of linear trackers. The Technics SL-7/10/15 are the popular ones because they're so small but the SL-Q1 sells for peanuts and has the exact same build quality & functionality, just in a standard (larger) form-factor.

Why?

• They all use the SL-1200MK2 quartz-locked servo platter drive ICs and general circuit design (Verified when I recapped my SL-15)
• As a result, rumble/wow/flutter measurements best most TTs, even many of the huge $20k units with heavy platters: https://www.hifinews.com/content/technics-sl-10-turntable-lab-report (i.e. no cogging that plagued older direct drive turntables)
• The linear tracking mechanism insures minimal inner-groove distortion/tracking error by design (compared to standard S/straight arm turntables).
• The linear tracking arms are extremely short and lightweight even compared to other linear tracking turntables (increasing the effective tonearm dampening and decreasing resonant frequency below audible hearing range (12Hz according to literature). I dare you to get one of these TTs to skip or hop out of a groove!
• Buy a broken one cheap and fix it easily! 95% of these have bad tone arm belts which is a $10/30 min fix. The other 5% have speed control issues and need the main board recapped (which is very straightforward to do compared to most amplifiers/more complex electronics/LT TTs with Biotracing tonearms). Much easier to fix than TTs with bad bearings in the arms or complex mechanical linkages that need to be disassembled and re-lubed.
• All are made out of solid aluminum with the SL-10/15 in particular closing tightly and isolating the cartridge from picking up feedback from your speakers. The SL-10/15 also have a built-in, magnetic record weight "puck" which holds the record in place. This allows the units to be played in any direction, even upside down!

Good suggestion beautifully made though my SL15 used to sometimes just stop playing in the middle of an LP side and eventually I threw it away in a fit of pique, I particularly regretted trhis later , particularly since the standard cartridge was one of the best ever produced.

 

[anmpr1]

1) At about the same time, I bought the cheapest Nitty Gritty record cleaner, which may have been a more important purchase than the turntable. Most of the records I had on hand were old and on the filthy side. I make my own cleaning solution with about 6 oz. distilled water, 1-2 oz. isopropanol, and a couple of drops of Kodak Photo-Flo wetting agent.

2) I had considered a Technics SL-1200, but at the time I was making the purchase, it had been discontinued. Also, the advice I got was that you could hear cogging on direct drive turntables and that their main advantage was reliability under heavy use.

1) I've cleaned old records with liquid soap and warm water rinse, then blow drying on warm to cool setting. I have experienced no problems with this method, although I've read some saying you shouldn't do that.

2) Cogging is something someone somewhere made up to disparage direct drive. I don't even know what it is, sonically. The newer Technics models are supposed to offer smoother rotation, but I've never heard anything that I could attribute to whatever cogging is supposed to sound like. And I've never read anything definitive from anyone who has. In the world of record playing, with all its possible and actual sonic faults, cogging is probably the last thing anyone needs to be worried about.

 

[SegaCD]

Good suggestion beautifully made though my SL15 used to sometimes just stop playing in the middle of an LP side and eventually I threw it away in a fit of pique, I particularly regretted trhis later , particularly since the standard cartridge was one of the best ever produced.

That's a real shame. Typical symptom of a bad tonearm belt! A $5 belt, a couple screws off the bottom of the lid, and some tweezers to feed the belt in and it would have worked like new again.

And yes, the EPC-P205MK3/MK4s are fantastic cartridges although I fear the internal rubber suspension on most old cartridges are drying out and hindering performance... One day I'll find a replacement needle for the MK4 that came on my SL-15 since the original owner bent the cantilever (how???).
In the mean time, an AT92e with an aftermarket Shibata JICO stylus does incredibly well. Works excellently for my CD-4 quadraphonic records (that use 30kHz carrier tones and have audio data that sits above 30kHz) so the frequency response at least is pretty darn good. Not much on the market today (p-mount or otherwise) that can do that.

 

[mhardy6647]

The problem with new tts is that decent ones are very expensive, and cheap ones are rife with pretty profound compromises in design and/or manufacture (e.g., materials).

There's much to be said for vintage turntable hardware, albeit with two caveats (from my perspective, that is).
1) Due to the current and aforementioned vinyl bubble prices are high (i.e., value is low relative to historical market trends).
2) Since the moving parts are critical to proper functioning of a turntable and tonearm, wear and tear is a big(ger) deal for these components than it typically is for electronics (amplifiers) and even loudspeakers. Many tts have been (as they say) rode hard and put away wet.

Speaking of rode hard... there's a third quasi-caveat 97%* of all eBAY sellers have no idea how to properly pack a turntable to survive 21st Century shipping. The depletion of vintage tt stocks as a direct result is, in total seriousness, distressing. Bottom line, if you (the OP) want to buy a used/vintage tt, buy local if at all possible.

All this being said...
The Technics DDs of the 1970s and into 1980s were well engineered and well constructed. I didn't appreciate them nearly as much then as I do now.
I was a Euro-tt kind of snob (Philips, Thorens, Linn... that sort of stuff) in those days, you see?

I've grown to appreciate the solidity and reliability of the Japanese-made, mass-market tts of that era.
Indeed, my daily driver was an SL-Q2 (found on the 'swap pile' at our local town dump in Harvard, MA) for quite a while.

DSC_2464 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Nowadays, and FWIW, I use something slightly more esoteric, but every bit as Japanese (and even DD).

DSC_8876 (4) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

If one's budget permits, buy one of Panasonic's current Technics SL-1200 reboots and be done with it in perpetuity.

All just my opinions, of course.


_________________
* according to http://www.bomus.org/ 87%** of all statistics are made up on the spot.
** OK, they say 34%, but I like my number better

 

[Frank Dernie]

That's a real shame. Typical symptom of a bad tonearm belt! A $5 belt

That is a shame. It did it from new so I thought it was some sort of electronic defect that was hard to diagnose. I should have sent it back to the retailer.

 

[RickSanchez]

I own the Rega RP1 (w/ the "Performance Pack" upgrade), the predecessor of the Planar 1. It's a fantastic TT and I've been very happy with it especially given the reasonable price point. You just have to be OK with the manual operation (e.g., no auto-return). For a fairly simplistic comparison of the two models check out this link, which claims the 24v motor on the Planar 1 is a worthwhile upgrade over the RP1.

I'm considering adding a Cambridge duo per this site's recommendation but I don't know what else.

As for other considerations:

1. Upgraded mat? I have no idea if this really makes a difference. Rega claimed it does with the "Perf Pack" upgrade for the RP1 (the mat is thicker and made of natural wool instead of synthetic materials: "better damping and reduced resonance") but I can't verify that.
2. Cleaning kit / equipment for your LPs.
3. As you allude to, a phono pre-amp. I personally can't speak to a good/great phono stage; I went out and bought a vintage harman/kardon amp/receiver that had a built-in phono stage and I'm happy with that. But worth researching what Rega offers: the built-in phono stage on the Planar 1 Plus or any of their stand-alone phono stages. I'd recommend a stand-alone unit.

 

[Killingbeans]

Technics SL1200 Mk II deserves serious consideration: Published specs are excellent, but affordably-priced ones are often well-used and lacking the dust cover, hinges and mounts. Nothing wrong with higher MK # but they have more DJ-specific features and aren't necessarily newer.

I second that. Get a nice SL1200 MKII, grab an Ortofon Concorde cartridge of some sort and replace the stylus with something from the OM-line (for instance a Stylus 30), and you'll have an everlasting TT with practically zero hassle (no cartridge alignment needed). That's what I did, and it worked beautifully... until I got tired of vinyl and sold it all.

If you love tinkering, there's also a ton of third party "upgrades" around for it. Some of them are more of a waste of money than others.

 

[Robin L]

The problem with new tts is that decent ones are very expensive, and cheap ones are rife with pretty profound compromises in design and/or manufacture (e.g., materials).

There's much to be said for vintage turntable hardware, albeit with two caveats (from my perspective, that is).
1) Due to the current and aforementioned vinyl bubble prices are high (i.e., value is low relative to historical market trends).
2) Since the moving parts are critical to proper functioning of a turntable and tonearm, wear and tear is a big(ger) deal for these components than it typically is for electronics (amplifiers) and even loudspeakers. Many tts have been (as they say) rode hard and put away wet.

Speaking of rode hard... there's a third quasi-caveat 97%* of all eBAY sellers have no idea how to properly pack a turntable to survive 21st Century shipping. The depletion of vintage tt stocks as a direct result is, in total seriousness, distressing. Bottom line, if you (the OP) want to buy a used/vintage tt, buy local if at all possible.

All this being said...
The Technics DDs of the 1970s and into 1980s were well engineered and well constructed. I didn't appreciate them nearly as much then as I do now.
I was a Euro-tt kind of snob (Philips, Thorens, Linn... that sort of stuff) in those days, you see?

I've grown to appreciate the solidity and reliability of the Japanese-made, mass-market tts of that era.
Indeed, my daily driver was an SL-Q2 (found on the 'swap pile' at our local town dump in Harvard, MA) for quite a while.

DSC_2464 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Nowadays, and FWIW, I use something slightly more esoteric, but every bit as Japanese (and even DD).

DSC_8876 (4) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

If one's budget permits, buy one of Panasonic's current Technics SL-1200 reboots and be done with it in perpetuity.

All just my opinions, of course.


_________________
* according to http://www.bomus.org/ 87%** of all statistics are made up on the spot.
** OK, they say 34%, but I like my number better

I had the earlier iteration of your Technics 'table, the SL D2. Very competent deck, sturdy. The SL D2 holds speed well. Note, however, that the speed control should be washed out with de-oxit periodically so the deck's speed doesn't wander. Worked well with a Shure 97e, worked better with a Shure M44-7. Mine had a damaged cover, got it at a thrift store for $50. SL Q2 has quartz control, the SL D2 has servo control. There's a fairly clean SL Q2 on fleabay for $200 + shipping right now.

 

[creativepart]

Both the Rega and Pro-Ject and fine starters. However, you can purchase a used Rega P2 or even P3 for the price of a new P1. The P3 would be a large improvement over the P1. And, should you decide that vinyl is not for you, it would have a good resale value online as well.

Of course, eBay is one option, but take a look at www.audiogon.com. You'll find dedicated HiFi lovers there that are always selling their usually well cared for gear as they move up to even higher quality items. And you don't run into all the scammers and cheats the way you do on eBay. I buy from both but really lean toward audiogon.com.

If you buy a used TT you'll most likely need an inexpensive phono pre-amp. As most TT don't come with one except for the super basic starter 'tables. You can buy a cheap phono pre-amp used as well probably for less than $100.

Best of luck - I've owned about a dozen TTs in my 56 years of turntable ownership (got my first in 1964) and I've owned 4 Rega TTs. My current Rega is a P8 that sells for about $3,500. It's a great 'table.

Good luck.