would you bother?

What's all this "be prepared to spend a ton of money" crap?!! There is a lot of choice for excellent reproduction at good prices, with 'table, tonearm, cartridge and preamp for a total of under a grand, considering the huge amount of quality used 'tables out there. With good choices, you can assemble something in this price range which will make most digital media sound like the dross it is. The tubed ASL Mini Phono sells for $200 new, there are the lower Regas, used Thorenses, ARs (which musically-speaking can kick the ass of a lot of high-end dross out there), Aristons, the Shure 97, Grados, cheaper Denons, and so forth. Are you after status or are you after music? As to software, apart from the over-priced re-issues, there's vinyl to be found in every Salvation Army, Neighbourhood Services, flea market, garage sale...there's a surplus (thank you "Perfect Sound Forever!). While it's true it is difficult to get good jazz cheaply, it is not impossible, and there absolutely tons of good used classical, if one doesn't religiously follow TAS lists of "finest recordings." The older Deutche Grammophons, Philips, Deccas, RCAs (even Red Seals often show up), Columbia, Turnabouts and more can all be surprisingly good. At 25 cents a pop, you can afford to take a risk. As to needing expensive cleaning machines, yeah, if you're anal-retentive, otherwise use your eyes to see if the album is clean and unmarked by scratches when purchasing, even at 25 cents. Experience will eventually tell you which marks are significant and which aren't. Radio Shack sells an excellent brush - the Discwasher - at $20 with walnut handle for dirtier records, as it has "wet-clean" capabilities. Otherwise a carbon-fibre brush is good for most albums. Relax already, no need to imtimidate our guests! Buy a cartridge - the Shure V15 for instance, that doesn't force you to adjust the VTA for each record, instead maybe once every two years. Sit back and enjoy the music. If you've got a VPI and an Audible Illusions already, you're well ahead of the game: $200 for Shure, $20 for Discwasher, 25 cents to $1 for records. Yeesh. Have fun!

Go for it 4yanx! Hopefully, there will be a real shoot-out. I put my money on the big disc.

I re-iterate my earlier point: that spending loads of dosh is not necessary to building an extremely musical amd informative vinyl rig. The trick is in choosing musical items over analytical items, in which of course, the more money you spend the more information you retrieve (with certain exceptions, however...). Vinyl's great advantage over digital media is it's musicality. Therefore aim for Prat and that sense of organic flow first, everything else second. Classic 3-point suspension designs such as the ARs, Aristons, Thorenses, and Linns are masters of Prat and flow. Regas are musical and have great Prat as well. Many of these 'tables can be had for $300 with decent arm: say an AR EB101, or others, which often come with Sumiko MMTs and so on. Add $200 Shure V15VxMR cartridge. Buy Antique Sound Labs tubed Mini Phono for $250. Total $750. Buy a NAD PP2 and the price drops by $150. Buy a plastic Grado and the price drops by another $100. Now we're at $500. Not only does such a system have great Prat and flow, it is also surprisingly detailed. Forget the overpriced re-issues, buy in used stores at $5 to a buck or less a piece. At this price this is fun, and very soon you will have hundreds of records: try buying good used CDs for a buck or less. And it would take a mega-buck CD-player to match or beat the AR/MMT/Shure combo even for information - as air, imaging and timing are also forms of information, which only the very rare and very expensive CD players can convey. The combo also retrieves a hell of a lot of simple detail as well. Those who say a mega-buck combo is NECESSARY have bought, or are planning to buy, mega-buck combos and are competing with the Joneses. Magic - where vinyl absolutely crushes digital media - can be had for much less. Remember, it's about music, not money, not information. Here I hasten to add that such a well-chosen combo retrieves an astonishing amount of information nevertheless. So, no great dedication to the cause is necessary: at these prices one can experiment, have a different experience, and have fun. With such a well-chosen system and at these prices and with fun in mind, there will soon be a convert.

ARs have the best isolation on the business. Sorry, Linn owners, Linn having one of the worst. Otherwise, wall mounts do work - even in drywall - for a lot less than a thousand bucks. Then there's your friendly neighborhood stud-finder. Let's face it, all this talk of the great inconvenience of LP playing is nothing more than a witch-hunt, and rationalisation for making the mistake of selling all those LPs years ago. Ooo, you have to get off your ass twice instead of once when playing an album. As for ticks and pops, there are quiet stylus and noisy ones, better tonearms and worse ones, phono stages which highlight noise and ones which don't. As always, some thinking and listening is required. And the payoff is blessed music, not some computer-chip approximation. What's more, the level of involvement is fun and rewarding, the LP jackets so much cooler and more fun to discover and collect. Each new cartridge has the quality of a fine new wine, something to look forward to and savour...CD players?

One thing for sure, music still raises the passions, which is precisely as it should be. In the interest of rhymes, go LP!