Vinyl & turntables

[Thropplenoggin]

I suggested adding clicks, pops and jumps to modern digital recordings, to a vinyl-addict mate who was complaining that CD sound was "too clean"...

I trust he has one of these bad boys, to get the most out of his vinyl.

Jesting aside, I am considering purchasing one of the budget ProJect turntables and giving vinyl a go...from what I have read, the dynamics of the sound still bests many of the 'compressed' digital formats around today.

[Nick Armstrong]

I trust he has one of these bad boys, to get the most out of his vinyl.

Looks more like a 'show stopper bake' from the Great British Bake-Off...

Seriously... same price as a Skoda Fabia SE 1.2 12v

I know which I'd prefer....

[Thropplenoggin]

Looks more like a 'show stopper bake' from the Great British Bake-Off...

I'm alarmed you even know the lingo from this, ahem, 'televisual feast'. And there I was thinking you spent your evenings listening to Fauré, quaffing Cheval Blanc '98, and working your way through Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

[Nick Armstrong]

I'm alarmed you even know the lingo from this, ahem, 'televisual feast'. And there I was thinking you spent your evenings listening to Fauré, quaffing Cheval Blanc '98, and working your way through Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Oh I straddle many levels

[umslopogaas]

#46 Thropplenoggin. As a confirmed vinyl addict, I strongly recommend that you get a turntable and give it a go. In my experience cheap turntables rumble and may not even go round at the correct speed. On the other hand, I cant imagine it is worth paying over ten grand! I have a Thorens TD 3001 BC and an SME arm, both are now quite old but serve me just fine. My cartridges (the SME has a detachable headshell, so I have two) are Goldrings, one with a mono stylus and the other with a stereo one. You can play mono LPs with a stereo stylus, but they pick up more crackle.

I freely admit that CD is clearly a superior medium in many respects. You get more music on the discs, they never wear out and they take up less space. However, I collect vinyl and the sound is good enough for me.

Well worth seeking the advice of your local hifi specialist shop. I dont know about your area, but I can strongly recommend Audio Destination, in Tiverton, Devon, just down the road from me: Mike Rogers is resident guru and he knows his stuff.

Its also worth pointing out that, judging from the bids on ebay, the majority of LPs are almost worthless, but a minority are worth a very surprisingly large amount. This is particularly true of early stereo Columbia, HMV and Decca. So if you are lucky enough to get your hands on good copies, you must have decent equipment to play them. With good equipment you can play an LP dozens of times without damaging it, but with the wrong set up you can wreck it with one playing. Interestingly, you do more damage by setting the tracking weight too light than too heavy.

And apologies if you know all this stuff already, but it is an enthusiasm of mine and increasingly, vinyl is disappearing into history and people dont really know how to handle it any more.

One last thought: I have a Keith Monks cleaning machine and I always clean LPs as soon as I get them. Such machines are expensive to buy, but you may track down a shop that offers a cleaning service: Fine Records in Hove used to do this for a pound a disc. A clean on the Monks makes a huge difference to the sound quality and you can get through a side without constantly having to de-clagg the stylus.

[Thropplenoggin]

#46 Thropplenoggin. As a confirmed vinyl addict, I strongly recommend that you get a turntable and give it a go. In my experience cheap turntables rumble and may not even go round at the correct speed. On the other hand, I cant imagine it is worth paying over ten grand! I have a Thorens TD 3001 BC and an SME arm, both are now quite old but serve me just fine. My cartridges (the SME has a detachable headshell, so I have two) are Goldrings, one with a mono stylus and the other with a stereo one. You can play mono LPs with a stereo stylus, but they pick up more crackle.

I freely admit that CD is clearly a superior medium in many respects. You get more music on the discs, they never wear out and they take up less space. However, I collect vinyl and the sound is good enough for me.

Well worth seeking the advice of your local hifi specialist shop. I dont know about your area, but I can strongly recommend Audio Destination, in Tiverton, Devon, just down the road from me: Mike Rogers is resident guru and he knows his stuff.

Its also worth pointing out that, judging from the bids on ebay, the majority of LPs are almost worthless, but a minority are worth a very surprisingly large amount. This is particularly true of early stereo Columbia, HMV and Decca. So if you are lucky enough to get your hands on good copies, you must have decent equipment to play them. With good equipment you can play an LP dozens of times without damaging it, but with the wrong set up you can wreck it with one playing. Interestingly, you do more damage by setting the tracking weight too light than too heavy.

And apologies if you know all this stuff already, but it is an enthusiasm of mine and increasingly, vinyl is disappearing into history and people dont really know how to handle it any more.

One last thought: I have a Keith Monks cleaning machine and I always clean LPs as soon as I get them. Such machines are expensive to buy, but you may track down a shop that offers a cleaning service: Fine Records in Hove used to do this for a pound a disc. A clean on the Monks makes a huge difference to the sound quality and you can get through a side without constantly having to de-clagg the stylus.

Thanks for your enthusiatic response, Umslopogaas. It's all new to me, so much appreciated.

[Richard Tarleton]

I'm no sort of hifi buff or expert, but when my old Rega deck (with MP11 cartridge) died in 2009 after 25 years service I replaced it with a new one (with Elys cartridge), so that I could go on playing my LPs - those I liked enough to keep but not enough to replace with CDs which would have cost 5 times as much as the new deck. A handful of them are probably irreplaceable (never issued on CD) or valuable. When I bought the first Rega in 1984 I cleaned many of my LPs on a Keith Monks and keep them in antistatic sleeves. I haven't seen a Monks since then - that one belonged to the hifi shop and you could take your LPs along and clean them yourself. I very occasionally pick up a new (second hand) LP in a second hand or charity shop if they appear to be in reasonably pristine condition....I had to get a pre-amp as well, no idea what it does but I was told I needed one. Total outlay if I recall in the £500-600 range. Worth having a decent deck that plays through your system......

[Thropplenoggin]

I'm no sort of hifi buff or expert, but when my old Rega deck (with MP11 cartridge) died in 2009 after 25 years service I replaced it with a new one (with Elys cartridge), so that I could go on playing my LPs - those I liked enough to keep but not enough to replace with CDs which would have cost 5 times as much as the new deck. A handful of them are probably irreplaceable (never issued on CD) or valuable. When I bought the first Rega in 1984 I cleaned many of my LPs on a Keith Monks and keep them in antistatic sleeves. I haven't seen a Monks since then - that one belonged to the hifi shop and you could take your LPs along and clean them yourself. I very occasionally pick up a new (second hand) LP in a second hand or charity shop if they appear to be in reasonably pristine condition....I had to get a pre-amp as well, no idea what it does but I was told I needed one. Total outlay if I recall in the £500-600 range. Worth having a decent deck that plays through your system......

Cheers, Richard. Perhaps Nice Guy Caliban might like to start a new thread including the above posts on 'Turntables and Vinyl'.

[french frank]

Jesting aside, I am considering purchasing one of the budget ProJect turntables and giving vinyl a go...from what I have read, the dynamics of the sound still bests many of the 'compressed' digital formats around today.

I stopped my brother taking a load of LPs to the local charity shop, took them off him and then got a cheap ProJect. Not being used to any sort of real hifi, I'm quite pleased to be able play them on any old thing. I clean them with a damp cloth

[Thropplenoggin]

I stopped my brother taking a load of LPs to the local charity shop, took them off him and then got a cheap ProJect. Not being used to any sort of real hifi, I'm quite pleased to be able play them on any old thing. I clean them with a damp cloth

Let's hope you haven't got any of these in that collection.

The only negative I can see with the ProJect series of budget turntables, which seem to win 5 stars across the board, is that they don't come with a dustcover.

[gradus]

Having endured clicks pops and jumps I was and remain convinced that digital sound is a huge advance over the vinyl lp especially for songs, solo instrumentalists and chamber music where really quiet singing/playing often emerged through a background of vinyl snap crackle and pop. I don't think I'd have the patience to clean vinyl records using a machine though I dust-bugged, parastated etc. my collection over many years, I am glad to be through with it.

[Barbirollians]

Let's hope you haven't got any of these in that collection.

The only negative I can see with the ProJect series of budget turntables, which seem to win 5 stars across the board, is that they don't come with a dustcover.

Really - I have on oldish one from about 10-12 years ago and that has a dustcover

[french frank]

The only negative I can see with the ProJect series of budget turntables, which seem to win 5 stars across the board, is that they don't come with a dustcover.

That's right - mine has no dustcover; and they have a thin rubber band hooked round the turntable so that the motor turns it. Is that common technology? It reminds me a bit of the crystal set era.

[Thropplenoggin]

That's right - mine has no dustcover; and they have a thin rubber band hooked round the turntable so that the motor turns it. Is that common technology? It reminds me a bit of the crystal set era.

Yes. The rubber band explains the £200 price tag as opposed to £12,000.

It's the 'Here's one I made earlier...' economic model.

[LeMartinPecheur]

That's right - mine has no dustcover; and they have a thin rubber band hooked round the turntable so that the motor turns it. Is that common technology? It reminds me a bit of the crystal set era.

Go back a few years (quite a few years); do you recall the arrival of direct drive turntables that were going to kill off low-tech belt drives? They constantly monitored and readjusted the speed. On paper this looked marvellous, but somehow they didn't sound as good as expected. Then someone worked out that they were actually modulating the cartridge output by constantly readjusting the speed and in effect introducing a high frequency 'flutter' at the frequency of the speed adjustment. A good old rubber-band drive (better called belt drive) turntable of adequate power and platter mass, even if it isn't exactly correct speed, is at least constant speed, which doesn't bug the ear anywhere near as much as a TT that's always trying to get it better.

So don't knock rubber-band drive: it was good enough for the Linn Sondek. Understood?

(OK, actually Linn used a thick rubber band...)