Trying to get in to vinyl, turntable suggestions?

04-19-09: Burnsy1
Thanks for the info so far. Checking out the technics on ebay, there are a handfull at varying prices. Anything in particular I should watch out for when considering used?

I notice many of these were used by dj's... is that a lot of wear and tear on the unit?

Given your price range, there is no reason to buy the Technics used. You can find the SL1210 M5G (has better tonearm wire and sounds better) new online shipped for under $500. I have a Technics and like it a lot, but would be cautious about buying used because so many are used for DJ-ing, which means they've usually had a rough life before hitting the used market.

04-20-09: Burnsy1
is it that hard to find vinyl? My goal is not to replace my library of cd's but obtain albums over time.

You're on the right track and know what you want. It's easy and fun to find vinyl. I had about a dozen LPs two years ago, just prior to buying my first turntable in 30 years. Two years later I have over 700, the majority of which I got for fifty cents to $2 at used record shops and thrift shops. I did this on a shoestring and am having a blast. I get immense pleasure from listening to vinyl now. I liked the higher level of resolution so much that I did a complete overhaul of my 2-channel analog rig (except for keeping the Technics turntable)--platform, headshell, cartridge, cables, amp, and speakers.

This has been an enjoyable road of discovery on so many levels--hunting for used vinyl in good shape, listening to music I might not otherwise because it's so affordable, digging back into the cultural icons of the '50s to the '80s, hunting through used record shops and swap meets, and gradually dialing in improvement after tweak to get a clean, quiet, dynamic, linear, focused sound out of the Technics. It's been an enjoyable process and I very much like where it's ended up for me--a musically satisfying system with lots of high-resolution analog media to play on it.

04-20-09: Learsfool
With all due respect to the fans of Technics, I personally would argue that there is a reason they are known as "DJ" tables.

And that reason is simply that they spin up to speed in 1/4 turn and can take a beating night after night. The SL1200 was designed as a home audiophile turntable. It was adopted by the DJ industry because of its reliability and durability, and because its rotational consistency, bass slam, and leading edge transients get people out on the dance floor.

For the money you are talking about, I would suggest buying a new Rega P1 or P2. You will get much better soundstaging and imaging, if these are important to you, as well as better resolution of instrumental and vocal timbres.

Simply not true. Subjectively a person may prefer the Rega, but it won't be on timbral accuracy, let alone rhythm, pace, drive, or leading transients. I just spent two hours Friday with my favorite LPs at my local British hi-fi dealer. I listened to a P2 with Rega Bias cartridge followed by a Roksan Radius 5 fitted with a Roksan-badged variant of the Goldring 1042. The signal chain from there on was all Naim, at least $10K worth.

Upon firing up the P2, at first the imaging impresses, but after two or three more cuts the shortcomings become very obvious. Once the recording got above 8 instruments or voices, it started to congest. The midrange is recessed *and* grainy. This is a $650 rig.

You can mail order an SL1210 M5G with improved tonearm wire for around $454 delivered. Add an Ortofon 2M Blue and you're at the same price range, and this rig will kick the Rega's ass eight ways to Sunday. For very little more money you can swap out the feet for brass cones, put it on a butcher block cutting board, and put Vibrapods or other vibration absorbing feet under the block. At that point the Technics reveals inner detail you won't hear on the P2.

When I tired of the P2, I started spinning on the Roksan instead. This was a big improvement, and at $2700 it ought to be. It resolved the details, the transients and tonal fadeouts far beyond what the Rega could do. But even at that, it sounded murky and sluggish. The midrange was recessed similarly to the P2, but wasn't grainy. This is a parlor trick to create the illusion of greater soundstage depth and ambient air and detail. This Roksan couldn't touch my Technics rig for linear response, bass drive and clarity, midrange transparency, pitch and rhythmical accuracy, and especially, timbral accuracy.

For those in love with the Rega RB300 and variants, it's still cheaper to get an SL1200 ($350, remember?) and then get the Origin Live Technics armboard and an RB300-compatible tonearm. For about $1500, you could have an SL1200 with an Origin Live Silver tonearm with VTA adjustment.

04-20-09: Tvad
Any debate about Technics versus Rega is a complete waste of bandwidth.

Yeah, but I had fun.

04-21-09: Learsfool
Since I am not a very good writer, sometimes my comments are taken much differently than they were meant, and I certainly take my share of the blame for that. As I have said before, I sure am glad a became a musician instead of a writer!

How right you are! If you hadn't written this clarification, I wouldn't have realized that your bigotry against direct drive turntables also extends to the people who listen to them.

04-21-09: Burnsy1
If the technics has a more homogenized, or quiet sound as some have described, but can also be upgraded in many ways...do the upgrades not impact this type of sound? If so any thoughts on what it is with the technics that is responsible for the perceived sound difference?

Out of the box, the Technics sounds compressed, as do most low cost turntables. The thing about the Technics is that some very simple tweaks open up its dynamic range. The Technics has excellent rotational accuracy, signal-to-noise ratio, and build quality and close tolerances of a much more expensive turntable. The downside is that its design was frozen in 1981 before vibration control and isolation were as well developed as they are now.

The first thing is, the tonearm wire in most of the SL12x0 machines is substandard for an audiophile piece of equipment. It imparts the dark, closed-in sound that's often described. But this can be fixed a couple of ways. The easy one is to get an SL1210 M5G, an upscale model, that comes stock from the factory with OFC wire throughout. The capacitance for the entire run of cable out to the RCA plugs is a fairly low 100pF, which is a good match with most MM cartridges. The other way to do it is to buy a lower level SL12x0 and have Kevin rewire it with high grade Cardas cable for $169. The cable upgrade (or selection of the M5G) opens up the sound, making it light and airy up top and with similar imaging to other turntables.

Second, get a better mat. The mat on a Technics has to do two things--damp the platter and isolate the record and cartridge from the mechanicals spinning it from below. There are several mats out there that will improve things. The cheapest is the Technics Supermat which weighs over a pound and which kabusa.com sells for about $20. Others have been happy with Herbie's Way Excellent Mat or the one from Iron Audio. This improves inner detail, lowers the noise floor, improves dynamic range, and lowers congestion on more complex musical passages.

Third, replace the feet with something that will drain the vibrational energy out of the turntable base and isolate the turntable from in-room vibrations. There are a couple of approaches to this: You can get brass cones that transfer energy out of the turntable to whatever its sitting on, or cushiony feet that absorb the energy, or a combination that does both. The top end replacement feet are the Isonoe Footers available from KABUSA for about $200 the set including screw-in footers, glass coasters, and sorbothane boots to go over the assembly. A second method is brass cones. You can get the Threaded Heavyfeet from Mapleshade Records for about $160/pair, or take the cheap way out (I did) and get the Dayton Speaker threaded cones from www.parts-express.com for $21/set. The threads are a perfect match for the originals. If you go with brass cones, you will for sure want to put the turntable on an isolation platform. I use the Dayton brass cones seated on a thick butcher block cutting board, which is then isolated from the shelf by something absorbent. I've variously used Vibrapods and silicone gel pads from an office supply shop.

The cumulative effect of addressing noise and vibration transforms the turntable, lowering the noise floor at the low end and raising the feedback resistant volume at the other. It also makes the sound cleaner and clearer in the middle.

Two last tweaks are the kabusa.com tonearm fluid damper and a Sumiko or LPGear headshell. The fluid damper is $150 and is easily installed in about 30 minutes. Set up properly, this lowers the resonant peak of the cartridge/arm resonant frequency and enables the tonearm to track hideously warped records without jumping the groove.

The better headshell damps resonances better and raises the effective mass of the tonearm slightly, making it a better match with many medium-compliance cartridges that came along after the Technics was designed.

When I first brought the Technics home my wife could easily hear the dynamic compression, but with the way I have it set up now it easily equals the dynamic range of the same recordings on CD and has all the clarity of a CD, but with the higher resolution and more organic microdynamics that analog brings.

I also use the KAB rubber record grip at $25. I've found it helps thin records sound like thick ones, and lowers the surface noise level a little bit.