Moving on from vinyl

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

We are hoping to move to a new home in 2017, but as we are proposing to move to a slightly more expensive location, some rationalisation person possessions will be inevitable. CDs, the Steinway and the Elgar Complete Edition are non-negotiable, but I have hardly touched my vinyl collection for years.

Whether the LPs will be easy to shift remains unknown, and the Technics Direct Drive turntable is a nightmare, probably my worst ever audio purchase.

However, I have an SME Series III arm which is rather good, and is still probably worth a bob or two. I do wonder how one packs such a delicate precision piece of apparatus without the original box, which disappeared long ago. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Beef Oven!]

We are hoping to move to a new home in 2017, but as we are proposing to move to a slightly more expensive location, some rationalisation person possessions will be inevitable. CDs, the Steinway and the Elgar Complete Edition are non-negotiable, but I have hardly touched my vinyl collection for years.

Whether the LPs will be easy to shift remains unknown, and the Technics Direct Drive turntable is a nightmare, probably my worst ever audio purchase.

However, I have an SME Series III arm which is rather good, and is still probably worth a bob or two. I do wonder how one packs such a delicate precision piece of apparatus without the original box, which disappeared long ago. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

So you kept your Brexit-promise to move to Scotland. Respect, Bruv.

[pastoralguy]

So you kept your Brexit-promise to move to Scotland. Respect, Bruv.

You would be most welcome!

[richardfinegold]

We are hoping to move to a new home in 2017, but as we are proposing to move to a slightly more expensive location, some rationalisation person possessions will be inevitable. CDs, the Steinway and the Elgar Complete Edition are non-negotiable, but I have hardly touched my vinyl collection for years.

Whether the LPs will be easy to shift remains unknown, and the Technics Direct Drive turntable is a nightmare, probably my worst ever audio purchase.

However, I have an SME Series III arm which is rather good, and is still probably worth a bob or two. I do wonder how one packs such a delicate precision piece of apparatus without the original box, which disappeared long ago. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

My actual recommendation would be to sell the tt(s), donate the lps, and go purely digital. Both of those tts ought to fetch a good price. You may not like the Technics but have you checked it's resale value lately?
Assuming that you don't want to do that, I would write SME and see if you can get a suitable container for the arm.
Is the cartridge attached to the arm? Is it a mc or mm cart if it is attached? If it's an mc especially I would suggest removing it and using the cart container. Break the stylus on an mc and you are sol.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Is the cartridge attached to the arm? Is it a mc or mm cart if it is attached? If it's an mc especially I would suggest removing it and using the cart container. Break the stylus on an mc and you are sol.

It's an Ortofon MC cartridge which is close to the end of its non-interchangeable stylus's life, but yes, I would remove it.

[cloughie]

My actual recommendation would be to sell the tt(s), donate the lps, and go purely digital. Both of those tts ought to fetch a good price. You may not like the Technics but have you checked it's resale value lately?
Assuming that you don't want to do that, I would write SME and see if you can get a suitable container for the arm.
Is the cartridge attached to the arm? Is it a mc or mm cart if it is attached? If it's an mc especially I would suggest removing it and using the cart container. Break the stylus on an mc and you are sol.

With the current interest in vinyl you should be quids in.

[Beef Oven!]

With the current interest in vinyl you should be quids in.

Not when 78% of them are recordings of the same Strauss number!

[teamsaint]

Not when 78% of them are recordings of the same Strauss number!

TBF, If anybody can do a good ebay listing of that lot, he's the man .

Anyway, don't get rid , EA, you can only regret it.

[Alain Maréchal]

Anyway, don't get rid , EA, you can only regret it.

Seconded. Keep them and buy a new turntable. You will find the rediscovery* enjoyable.

*no pun intended, but serendipitous (I hope - I'm never quite sure** in English)
(**nor about serendipitous - I'll stop now).

[Dave2002]

How many LPs?

10? 100? 1000? 10000?

We don't know how well off you are - and we don't particularly want you to tell us - but you could probably get a pretty good turntable and arm for £5000-£10k. Would it be worth just moving all of the LPs and then buying new record playing kit?

If not, is there a price level at which it would be worth buying new kit or even having your kit maintained?

If not, then really consider rfg's suggestion, and get rid of it all - either just bin everything, or give the stuff away, or spend time and effort trying to sell them.

Before we moved we did play LPs, but we just never got the kit set up in our present house. Other priorities came to the fore.

I have a friend who ended up putting some perfectly good LPs into the refuse bins, as nobody else wanted them. I assume he also disposed of the turntable. OTOH we here have thousands of LPs which we never play, and several turntables in our garage and loft - none actually used. I always intended to play some of the LPs and digitise the best of them, but I've never had the time or the space to make that possible. You have to be reaonably sure you will have the time and resources to make use of the LPs within a reasonable time if you move them.

The closest we got was last year when we saw a house which we thought we might like to buy. That had a huge "shed" - actually a barn on the land, which could have been used to put in the equipment and the LPs - and it might then have been feasible to set up a process for digitising those records. It didn't happen!

I think it is possible to get very good quality sound from LPs, but only at what many would consider a very high cost. Most of us with limited reources tend not to think this is worthwhile. If you have some LPs which have not been reissued on CDs, then it might be worth trying to get those digitised, but for most LPs which have already been transferred to CD (or some other digital format)? then it might be simpler to just buy the new transfers.

if your new property is small, then options to actually do what I have thought about - digitising the LPs or even playing them will be limited, so perhaps the disposal option is the best way to go.

Thinking about this for a few seconds more, if you do move the LPs make sure you set up a turntable as soon as you can after you move in, otherwise you will simply end up with clutter which will hang around for years. If you actually set up the record playing equipment you should at least be able to play the discs, and take a longer view, and you might be motivated to do so.

[Alain Maréchal]

I have a friend who ended up putting some perfectly good LPs into the refuse bins .

Is there an icon that resembles Edvard Munch's "Scream" but has added anguish?

1. I think you could get a very good turntable for much less than Dave's suggestion.
2. What about all those LPs, not to mention works, that have not appeared on CD? There are more than one might think. I value the music more highly than the sound.

[umslopogaas]

The SME arm was top of the range in its day and you should still be able to get a hundred quid or more for it, though modern arms are superior so dont expect a fortune.

You could spend ten grand on new equipment - I know a dealer where you could do so very easily - but a thousand quid would buy a very respectable modern turntable and arm.

As far as the LPs go, I collect them and so obviously I'd advise keeping them. You can get excellent quality sound from LPs, but there are three ifs: IF they are undamaged, IF they were good quality to start with and IF you have decent equipment. They also need careful cleaning. I have a Keith Monks cleaning machine and would not contemplate vinyl without it. All of my discs have been cleaned, most of them twice, and a good clean makes an amazing improvement.

If you do decide to sell them, some may be worth a lot of money, judging by the bidding on ebay, but this is a very compiicated subject. Firstly, only some labels are collectable. Secondly, they must be early (late 50s and 1960s) vintage; some mono discs from the early 50s are also valuable. Thirdly, they must be the original labels, the LP equivalent of first editions and they must be the first issue of that label. So, for example, some Decca 2000 series on the original label are valuable, but the same performances re-issued on Decca Eclipse are worthless.

So if you have any silver and turquoise Columbia SAX series, white and gold label HMV three digit ASD series, or Decca SXL 2000 "wide band" series, they could be worth a lot. Any Leonid Kogan violin concerto on silver and turquoise Columbia SAX could fetch at least a couple of thousand quid, for example.

If you want to sell them and think some may be of value, send me a private message and we can discuss further. I'm not a dealer myself, but I can put you in touch with one.

[Dave2002]

Is there an icon that resembles Edvard Munch's "Scream" but has added anguish?

1. I think you could get a very good turntable for much less than Dave's suggestion.
2. What about all those LPs, not to mention works, that have not appeared on CD? There are more than one might think. I value the music more highly than the sound.

I would have offered to take those LPs off his hands - but I didn't discover that they'd gone in the bin until after the event. Then again, given that I've not played an LP for years, it would simply have added to my own storage problems. I suppose I could even have taken his turntable - don't know what happened to that.

There was another friend who downsized recently into a flat - my guess is that his LPs also went to landfill. There are many older people who are clearing out, or whose children "kindly" think they'd be better off in smaller accommodation who do get rid of stuff like that. Some have really large collections. Some do manage to off load stuff to Oxfam or other sensible outlets, but others don't.

[Alain Maréchal]

I weeded my LP collection a few years ago, but did it carefully. I did not need 5 copies of LvB 2 conducted by Cluytens. 3 is sufficient (one to play, one in case it suffers damage, one as a safeguard. Perhaps I needed 4, but settled for 3).

A comparison of only the opening chords with two CD manifestations of the same recording convinced me I needed it on LP.

[Dave2002]

1. I think you could get a very good turntable for much less than Dave's suggestion.

Depends what you mean by good.

I don't know what the current price status of "good" or "very good" turntables is - perhaps £2k is the minimum for very good.

I believe that acceptable ones can be had for well under £1000 - but a lot depends on how good you want the sound to be.

I always believed that CD was better than vinyl and that vinyl could not compete. One day I happened to hear an expensive turntable - probably a Linn - but
that was years and years ago and it sounded comparable to a very good CD player. I won't get into the "arguments" about better/worse. Another friend had
one which I think did cost him around £2000 - that was also years ago - and it also sounded very good.

That's why I'm suggesting £2k as the price for a good piece of turntable kit. Arguably (very much) that might compare with CD kit costing around £1k.

I grew up on old Garrard decks - a really ancient model - can't even remember the number - maybe SP10, then SP25, then I had a few others including a 301 (which I sold .. for £15 ...agggh). I think I also had an EMI SPU arm at one point - very odd unipivot design. It was in poor condition - I think I threw it away (maybe more screams from elsewhere ...).

Currently I have a 401 and a Thorens deck lurking around in storage space - maybe even a Technics and another Garrard cheapie which I bought a few years ago with the view that I might use it to play LPs which I bought in charity shops.

Crazy enthusiasts still spend serious money on revamping old decks - and fitting new cartridges etc. A 301 or 401 such as I had/have would easily cost over £1000 each in good condition (ay, but there's the rub ...). My 401 has a bit cut out of it because a previous owner couldn't fit it into his box (another aggghhhh....).

I do have an SME Mk II - like the rest, languishing, plus a range of cartridges - some Ortofons, some Shure.

At the cheaper end of the turntable market I hear that Project or Rega turntables and arms give good results, and are affordable, but how they compare with the more expensive stuff I don't know.
Many people might be very happy with such Project or Rega kit - but my feeling is that these wouldn't give the SQ which some much more expensive turntables and arms give.

Our OP has an SME III - I think IIRC that's quite a high end model, so should be worth a lot - even if it needs refurbishing.

Also, some enthusiasts still recommend moving coil models. I don't know what they're like - never had one - but they were always held to be significantly better than MM designs.
Then one needs better pre-amps.....

All of that LP cleaning and stuff - it's a pain. I think rfg agrees. However, OTOH, if one "invests" in high quality kit, and cleaning machines etc., then I do think good results can be had.
My view then would be to go through the pain of doing all that once, then use high end digital equipment to digitise the LPs, then put the kit away!