Scots Taffer on 17/1/2008 at 04:32

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Can't fault something for doing it's job... and I'd clean that thoroughly if it got dropped.

Fafhrd on 17/1/2008 at 06:37

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Or you could get a regular ass turntable with stereo RCA out jacks, and a female-male stereo RCA to stereo 3.5mm cable and save a shit ton of money.

I've been doing that with my parents' '70s era Dual 1237 Automatic turntable, and I have to agree that there's something oddly relaxing about putting an LP on, and laying on the floor next to the turntable with headphones on and just listening through something.

Chances are good that if you've got any sort of thrift stores near you you could probably get a mostly functional turntable for cheap, Jepsen. You might have to resort to Ebay or some googling to get some replacement bits for it, though.

frozenman on 17/1/2008 at 15:44

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Buying a turntable that has FEATURES that allows you to convert the LPs to MP3s completely ruins the point of having a turntable in the first place. Unless you have some ultra-rare old records that might earn you some fat ratios on a bittorrent, the hiss and pops that come through sound awful in MP3 compression, and even worse on little tiny earbud headphones.

I imagine a lot of these currently manufactured turntables that advertise their MP3 conversion abilities are specifically marketed to the 30-50 year old crowd, who hold well-paying office jobs and are left with boxes of REO Speedwagon and Dan Fogerty albums from their teens, who don't realize that converting to MP3 was always possible, and now just want to compress the whole of their for-the-most-part worthless music collection on an iPod. I also feel like if you own an iPod, you're probably not gonna have the level of patience required to record an entire 12", 2 sides, at regular playback speed into the computer. (Unless someone knows more about these turntables than I do- can they be recorded at 78RPM or something and then slowed down?)

That being said, my girlfriend just got me an (http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/turntables/c2b92193a60be297/index.html) Audio-Technica AT-PL120 for Christmas. After I finally put it together, balanced the tone-arm, inserted the cartridge, and put on Before and After Science, I kind of got a little bit of a boner it sounded that amazing. This one doesn't have an automatic tone-arm that lifts when you're done playing, and it is aimed somewhat at DJs in the sheer amount of pitch control it offers (all the way from 26RPM to 94RPM, forward OR reverse play), but it sounds absolutely amazing for ~$300.

One of the other reasons I love turntables is that places an emphasis on the listening experience that I really think is being lost day-to-day. If you're gonna put down the bong, drag yourself up off the couch, pick out a record and put it on, then you definitely want to hear it, or you want to show somebody an album. Now compare this to letting iTunes run on shuffle constantly, or downloading a single. Not only do they sound better, but records at least remind me of a time when the music industry wasn't so appalling.

Oneiroscope on 17/1/2008 at 19:57

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Same here. LP's you almost HAVE to listen to the whole thing. It's just too much of a pain to find the one song, lol.

Best listening experience I ever had was an LP of Physical Graffiti on my mom's record player, $100-$200 needle, 400 Watt speakers. In My Time Of Dying. John Bonham, man. Whoa. And I wasn't even stoned.

Honestly though, I dont think you need to spend megabucks for the turntable. You can probably find an old used one at a thrift store or an antique store, maybe put a new needle in it (again, you don't have to get a loan or anything). Supposedly direct drive is better, but honestly I don't think it matters all that much.

It all depends. Are you an audiophile? Are you going to be putting it through an all tube boutique system? Are you prepared to spend shit tons of money for a certain sound? If not, why break the bank? Save the money and buy more records and something to smoke while ya listen to em.

Aja on 18/1/2008 at 02:50

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The other day I jammed my hand into the stylus by accident. Forty dollars later and it's good as new, and this is not an expensive cartridge! :(