[Closed] Mrs. S bought me a turntable for xmas. Good or bad?

Is this a 45/33 turntable for retro records or a variable speed twin decks technics so you can slam the vinyl/ roll another phat choon etc?

Bad if you love vinyl as it's gonna get spendy

Bad if you love vinyl as it’s gonna get spendy

This really. I’ve been discovering the joys of 60s rare northern soul 45s. And yes it does sound better than an MP3 or Flac.

What is a good vinyl player then?

I got one around September, set myself a limit of one LP a month to give myself to listen before the next one arrives plus I gave my wife a list to pick from for birthdays and Christmas from the kids in-laws etc its great no more crap presents. Just reminded me to order January's.
.

I’ve been discovering the joys of 60s rare northern soul 45s

That sounds more expensive than a crack habit

As someone who had loads of vinyl (in the loft), my beloved bought me a turntable a few Christmases ago. The vinyl is all down from the loft, and now she buys me some desirable vinyl for Christmases and birthdays, the latest arrivals being Kate Bush - Hounds of Love and Amy Winehouse - Frank.

Always had one, I’ve pretty much stopped buying vinyl now though, its just too expensive compared to all other formats.
I’d be trawling 2nd hand record shops (and charity shops) for bargains if I was just starting a collection. Online prices have gone crazy.

She bought it without any suggestion from you? Weird; or is it part of a bigger game?

"I know what I'll get our Derek for Christmas - a turntable ! I win this year's useless gift competition easily !"

@binners - yep.
But as I’ve barely spent any money on anything this year (pretty much records and beer) it’s just about doable .

Father-in-law bought us one too. I had the joy's of one of the few albums we own the other night, New Kids on the Block, gurl. Bloody awful.

He also bought a killer picture disc that seems to foul the arm base as it rotates, how is that even possible?

It's what I'd call a basic auto TT. A Marantz TT5005.

I’d be trawling 2nd hand record shops (and charity shops) for bargains if I was just starting a collection.

2nd hand record stores charge almost as much as new prices nowadays from my experience.

Rooster records in Exeter, for example. Nice shop, very good selection of stuff, but bloody expensive.

Reissues on 180gm vinyl in places like HMV are £20-30 an album now.

Charities aren't the goldmine they were 15-20 years ago. You might strike lucky, but most have been dug to death.

If you have an Oxfam music and books store near you, they can be good, but prices can be high for dubious condition records (they always go by book price even on stuff that looks like a dog has had a go at it).

eBay is a total lottery. High prices, and condition of records is often very much not as described. But, you can find the occasional bargain.

Discogs is very good for finding almost anything on vinyl, and prices aren't as high as high as eBay.

Be prepared to pay handsomely for OG mint vinyl though. It's not a cheap hobby any more!

I miss living in or near London, if only for the pleasures of the Camden Music and Video exchange basement, and Spitalfields market record fair.

I'm waiting for the minidisc revival.

2nd hand record stores charge almost as much as new prices

Depends on the shop. And the record.

Also, I was lying, I can’t stand record shops these days. They never have what you’re looking for, so you just end up looking through everything, and it’s mostly crap

It's expensive if you just [b]have[/b] to have a specific or rare version of an album.

Before Covid I used to go to my local second-hand record store with an open mind on what I wanted and spend an hour or two browsing - and come out with a hand-full of albums for between £5 and £8 each.

It doesn't have to be spendy!

...anyway - what turntable did your wife buy you? We can't offer a fully judgemental decision without a full inventory of your hi-fi system!

Did she get you any tracks to go with it?

I've told my missus NOT to get me turntable as I'm well aware of how deep into hobbies I get and know it would instantly get expensive and space consuming. Not helped by a mate at work who is very into record collecting and is constantly showing me his latest purchases. It's like a middle-aged. middle-class siren song to my geeky ears...

Rooster records in Exeter, for example. Nice shop, very good selection of stuff, but bloody expensive.

Hah, glad it's not just me thinks that.

They're not really more expensive though are they taking into account inflation.

£20 approx for new stuff. How much were they in the 80s £7-£10?

Oh and buying records and getting them home all excited to play them and find that they were either warped or had audible ticks etc used to drive me mad as I was expecting them to be perfect like cd, but nowadays I've embraced that it's an imperfect medium and can appreciate it for what it is

I sold mine and all the records. I wouldn’t say it’s better than other formats, just a different, sort of warmer sound. A lot depends on stylus, cartridge, amp, speakers etc too. Kids, space and me being lazy were the main reasons for getting rid.

My ariston Q deck that I bought with my student grant in 1989 is still plugged in and used every now and then. Had to get a new belt a few years back. I don't buy vinyl now, got enough, and spotify just makes things too easy... My son does though, aged 19 and quite into it. Has just ordered himself a turntable- audio technica at lp60x I believe... also with his student loan... and he has a few bits of vinyl that he has acquired of his own... My daughter was given a very cheap and nasty akai portable turntable for her birthday last September. I think she has 3 records. Had not got it out of its box so we made her the other night and had a great time playing early 90s dance classics like cola boy 7 ways to love through its tinny little speaker...

I was a bit of a crate digger in my 20s/30s.
Liked a bit of everything - hip-hop, jazz, funk, soul, dance/Techno, folk, rock (of all kinds) and anything random that might sample well too.

I've ended up with what you might call an eclectic collection.

Some things, like Mowax, or ninja tunes, I can never pass up. But no real focus to it
There's some stuff you'd expect me to have that I don't, and loads of random crap I don't know why I bought!

Here's about 1/3 if my LPs along with my lovely old Lenco GL85.

I've got a Pro-ject turntable upstairs, along with some Ikea units full of more black gold.

They’re not really more expensive though are they taking into account inflation.

£20 approx for new stuff. How much were they in the 80s £7-£10?

Precisely. CDs were about £12 back in the early 90s. Vinyl today really isn't that expensive.

Muffin man:

TT is a Marantz TT5005.
CD player same brand CD63 MKII KI Signature
Amp same brand PM5005
Tape deck Denon DM550
DALI Spektor II speakers.

Ajantom - that Lenco is class.

Good and Bad....

Good... I find I sit and listen rather than have background music....

Bad... it gets very addictive, and expensive.....

Though I find I am buying more and more direct from artists, either at gigs ( remember those ? ) or off the artist web sites ....

My other favourite way was to mooch round record fairs,
Next in line is local independent record shops, again often by web order....

Good if you like music and you want to listen to albums

Bad if you like having money

I've always bought vinyl but have a fairly meager collection. It can get fairly obsessive and I've just recently signed up to a subscription thing through a record label on bandcamp. I seem to have fell down the "coloured limited edition" hole recently and I've even found myself justifying spending so much a month that I can't afford a new bike at the moment but I can somehow justify trying to buy every album by Guided By Voices (not started yet and their back catalogue is huge so I can't see me following that one through) or buying my first cassette last month in 20 odd years only to realise I have sod all to play it on

It's a thankless pursuit with no end in sight, you'll argue with your significant other over the cost and you'll never be happy.......it's great, honest.

It’s lovely...sitting out in the sun room just now with the turntable,lots of records and plenty of red wine.. Doesn’t get much better

I've had a michell syncro turntable and i haven't used it for years. Shock horror to all those who say vinyl sounds better - I prefer the sound of my cd player which blows the michell into the weeds, but then it's an expensive Yamaha cd s2000. It's got quite a warm sound for a cd player, but the clarity and bass are far superior. I've been slowly flogging my vinyl off on ebay but still got a few left. Prices on ebay are quite cheap unless you've got something rare or a first edition of a cult record.

£20 approx for new stuff

£30 nearer the average price I reckon. Even so, compared to other ways you can buy music, it is flippin expensive.

This really. I’ve been discovering the joys of 60s rare northern soul 45s. And yes it does sound better than an MP3 or Flac.

Do, it really doesn’t. Different, yes, but not better. That warm sound you covet? That’s compression, that thing that MP3’s are always criticised for, is a inherent part of the recording process, the high and low frequencies are rolled off, highs to stop ‘ringing’ which could cause the cutting lathe head to burn out, and lows, to avoid transients which would cause the tone-arm to skip, or, as I’ve had experience of on a vinyl copy of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, on ‘Go Your Own Way’, one groove crossed over into the next, for just that reason.
It’s why 12” vinyl singles are vastly superior because the grooves are much more spread out, allowing better bass performance.
I’m sure Chiefgrooveguru will confirm this, but a book I’ve referred to many times, ‘Perfecting Sound Forever’ goes into a lot more detail.
And a hint to anyone buying second-hand vinyl, avoid anything pressed in the 80’s, it will almost certainly be crap. Most discs were like flexidiscs, you could bend them round until the opposite sides touched, and they were always warped, due to the oil crisis because the discs were made much thinner. And recycled vinyl was used, unsold albums were returned and ground into bits, but that included the label, so records often skipped, due to tiny bits of paper embedded in the plastic, often in the actual grooves; I had an album which had lots of tiny white specs all over it, with a magnifying glass you could see they were flakes of paper set into the plastic.
Then there were releasing agents used in pressing the discs, which caused lots of surface noise - when Peter Gabriel’s fourth solo album came out I returned four or five copies, because of the continuous crackling and hissing, and that was on a turntable that would have cost £2500 new.
That was in 1982, the CD came out around the same time so I bought a copy, taped it and used the disc to demo HiFi at my Saturday job, and never bought any more vinyl after that.
I still have that original CD, and the Denon CD player I eventually bought, about £800, and it was superb, silky, inky silence, instead of frying bacon where there was supposed to be silence, and little subtle sounds of instruments, and you could hear Margo Timmins of Cowboy Junkies lips opening as she sang on the Trinity Sessions album.
Sublime.

Nice piece there CZ.

I am a CD nut. I have a heavily customised Marantz CD63 MKII KI Signature from around 1998. It too has the warmer sound associated with vinyl but is soooo clean and silent where it should be. It's a perennial argument the CD/vinyl thing. I will always go for CD. My TT is cheap and will be no more than a novelty and Mrs. S bought it knowing this; that I'd like to listen to an alternative format occasionally.

Precisely. CDs were about £12 back in the early 90s. Vinyl today really isn’t that expensive.

Not compared to what they cost in the past but a lot more expensive that the modern (non phyical) alternatives I suppose.

I still have my Specials album I bought in 1979 and from memory it was around £4.50

Look at the RetroBike forum.
Buying a turntable is just like buying an older bike.

Do, it really doesn’t. Different, yes, but not better.

If you prefer the sound then it's better.

Not compared to what they cost in the past but a lot more expensive that the modern (non phyical) alternatives I suppose.

I agree - just making the point that £20 is quite reasonable when you consider what you're getting, and how much it would've cost in the past. I tend to listen to stuff on Spotify to see if I really like it, then buy on vinyl. It's a bit frustrating that vinyl's resurgence as wrecked the second hand market for buyers - it was really cheap 15 years ago.

Brought my dad's old Sony system and record collection back to mine for something different to listen to working from home. Stereo was probably from the 70s and had been in storage since the late 90s, record collection late 60s into the 70s. Some I was interested in giving a listen, others no chance!

Unfortunately it only lasted half a record before smoke started to pour out of it. Must've caught it seconds before it burst into flames had been out the room a few minutes before so got pretty lucky.

Can't decide now whether to try and get it fixed or buy myself another one. The price of vinyl definitely puts me off getting properly into it.

Just a heads up that HMV are doing 2 vinyl LP's for £30 online. Postage is free and there's a pretty decent selection of classic albums. Something for everyone.

Thanks for that bees.

ah yes, thanks Bees.

(I spent a chunk of lockdown-1 time with one of these, it brought all my old vinyl up to as-new condition and was a nice little project: spin cleaner)

(I notice it costs more now...)

@countzero I think I've diagnosed why your vinyl sounded crap:

Peter Gabriel’s fourth solo album

@countzero
Oh yes it does. It sounds way better. I love the sound, the imperfections, the depth

@bobgarrod I looked at a couple michell syncro's and to be honest I wish I had bought one of them at the time as it was quite reasonable. If I am honest its the looks that were apealing

I have quite nice pimped up Thorens TD-147 that's not too shabby, that I would not want to sell. So having a Syncro as well seemed a bit of an indulgence

The phono stage on my Arcam Alpha 10 is playing up at the moment, luckily though its a plug in board, so I need to get a new one, or get this one sorted.

@bazzer - I bought it based on the looks - I was on holiday in York at the time and saw it at vickers hifi when they were close to the town centre. Even better I think it was on interest free credit (might be wrong about this as we are talking 1987 or 1988. I think it was £300 at the time. It replaced a dual cs501? which was itself a replacement for a sansui sr 222. I keep the michell from nostalgia - its not been used for years, but it still looks great.

After lauding the sound of my yamaha cd s2000 cd player, it's decided to commit suicide again. 18 months ago it refused to load any cds. The repairers couldnt find anything wrong with it . i had the laser mechanism replaced at a cost of £180. It was fine for a while, then it started to refuse to open the cd drawer. That eventually stopped but now it refuses to load . Since i bought it secondhand for £450 some years ago I've purchased a naim cd5si as a replacement.

@bobgarrod well if you paid £300 you can double or triple your money based on condition of it

I have an Arcam alpha 9 CD player with an external Audiolab M-DAC.

cd5si is pretty posh

@bazzer - a new Yamaha cds2100 would cost £2k so £1300 for a naim seems a bargain. I've had arcam stuff in the past - the last was a cd72. I wish i'd had it upgraded to a cd92 when arcam were offering that option. Some years ago i got a great deal on some Roksan gear - they were selling the roksan Kandy mk1s at half price - £700 for the amp and cd player. The amp still soldiers on connected to some b&w 685s.The amp has some impressive heft. I could sell the michell but not just yet - still sentimentally attached to it.

Any decent tips on online sellers? Amazon seems to have a decent selection obviously but anywhere else worth a look.

A friend of mine sold me his Project Debut for £40 and he’d just put a new stylus on it! Bargain! We’ve bought a handful of records and enjoy listening to it occasionally. Sometimes a CD, sometimes a record. It’s all good. And it’s not sodding Spotify which makes it even better.

Juno is pretty good for vinyl and I'd rather give them my money rather than Amazon.