New Vs Vintage Turntable?

[xgsjx]

I’m looking for a good looking & good sounding turntable, so thought I’d get advice & suggestions from the knowledgeable folk on here. 
I’d like to keep it to around £500 including the tone arm & cartridge. I don’t mind going a little over if it’s something that my wife approves of (it is for both of us). 
New, I’ve spied a Pro-Ject 2XPERIENCE, a Pro-Ject Elemental special edition, and the Rega Planar2 - all around £500. There’s also the Technics SL40 on sale for £610, which is very nice.

 

Vintage, I’ve been looking at a couple of Thorens decks. There’s a TD-125 available that’s just in budget, but considering they go for between £500 & £5000, it’s at the bottom end. 
Also saw a Systemdex iiX for sale not too far from me. I know it gets great reviews, but I’m not sold on the looks (it’s the black finish).

 

Anything else I should be looking for?

 

I don’t need a phono stage, as it’ll be hooking up to a Ruark R410 system. 

[itu]

Start with a good cartridge. I prefer MM, as you can change stylus. If the turntable is steady runnin', you need think about the options: 

- speeds 16/33/45/78 

- automatics (record size [7/10/12"], end stop, fully automatic...) 

- pitch adjustment is sometimes nice if you play along with records in standard tuning 

 

If your collection is LP/EP/singles, a simple 33/45 turntable with end stop would most probably work very well. 

 

Buy a good antistatic carbon brush! And I hate dust covers without decent hinges. 

 

78 rpm records would benefit from a special needle and cartridge. 

[PaulThePlug]

Where is the TT to be sited?

Wall/Shelf for a Solid Plinth like a Rega or Floor rest unit, where a suspended plinth might be a better choice - Lynn/System Deck.

 

And the thing with a Vintage... it may of fallen out of favour some years before being sold... like my Rega Player 3 / ATF5 Stilton that has been in the loft for 18yrs, so factor in at least a motor and spindle bearing lube and a belt(s)

Edited Saturday at 21:17 by PaulThePlug

[xgsjx]

Cheers guys.

It’ll mostly be albums that we play. I’ve got a couple of 45s, but chances are, they’ll rarely get played. Not got any 78s. 
 

The turntable will be going on a floor standing sideboard style cabinet, so would a suspended plinth be the better option?

 

[fergs40]

A bit like with basses I’d always suggest buying used (unless the new car smell/first owner vibe is an important part of the experience for you), but unlike basses I’d be wary of going too vintage unless you are buying from somewhere that offers a guarantee and/or will fix it if it goes wrong.

 

For example, I still have my Ariston Q Deck II which I bought in 1992 for around £200 (which is getting on for £500 in 2026). Great deck, but the plastic in the tower supporting the arm bearings has become brittle, meaning it’s now held together with glue and hope. Works great for spinning the occasional album in my office, but its days as the main deck are past.

 

I replaced it in 2022 with an Audio-Technica LP5 (now superseded by the LP5X), for all of €185 from the local classifieds. It’s a great thing - really solid construction and it has a built in phono stage, which is good for me as the phono stage in my 1992-vintage Marantz PM35 amp has become very noisy (maybe needs recapping?).
 

Both the LP5 and LP5X had rave reviews from What Hifi, so with that and my personal experience I’d say it’s a solid recommendation.
 

Main downside is that it’s fully manual, so you need to be around to lift the arm at the end of the record. But, hey!, you’re listening to vinyl because you want to concentrate on the music without other distractions, so that won’t be a hardship, right?

 

Anyway, HTH - I’m sure another opinion will be along shortly!

[PaulThePlug]

A suspended plinth might save a 'needle-bounce' or two on a side board type unit on plush underlayed carpet...

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

You mentioned the Rega Planar 2 ,and you don’t mind considering vintage . No doubt this page will attract the usual audiophile beard twitchers who will give great advice.

Fwiw I purchased a Rega Planar 2 brand new back in the mid ‘90s . The annoying thing for me at the tine , was having to remove the platter to change speed when going from 331/3 - 45 rpm .

I bumped into an old friend at the time who told me he knew someone who was selling a pink triangle turntable .They had a reputation in the early ‘90s apparently. I was told the sound would blow the Rega 2 out of the water!  He was right ! I had to purchase a rega bias tone arm for it ,and an ortofon or nagaoka cartridge .

Anyway , apart from the lid ( which had a reputation for being fragile ) the turntable is a beast ! The model I have is the little pink thing . Innuendos aside ,they are always on eBay and worth checking out . 
I’m wondering what the modern day alternative would be 🤔..

[fergs40]

57 minutes ago, xgsjx said:

would a suspended plinth be the better option?

How solid is your floor and how much dancing will you be doing next to the turntable? You can make any needle skip if you work at it…but with a reasonably solid floor (wood or concrete, for example) you shouldn’t encounter too many problems. 

[xgsjx]

20 minutes ago, fergs40 said:

How solid is your floor and how much dancing will you be doing next to the turntable? You can make any needle skip if you work at it…but with a reasonably solid floor (wood or concrete, for example) you shouldn’t encounter too many problems. 

It’s fairly solid where the unit is sitting. It’s wood, but right next to brick wall.  Not much of a dancer. 

[spongebob]

Rega fanboy here! 🤪

[Dan Dare]

1 hour ago, spongebob said:

Rega fanboy here! 🤪

 

And here. A Planar 2 is a great inexpensive TT, but adding a cartridge (the Rega ND3 is ideal) will take it quite a bit over your £500 budget. Pro-Jects are decent. For your budget, I'd steer clear of real vintage items. Any suspended sub-chassis designs, such as Linn, that you can get for £500 are almost certainly going to need you to spend money to bring them up to snuff. 

 

However, something like a used but fairly recent Planar 2 or 3 (or Pro-Ject equivalent) would fit the bill and come in around budget. At that level, people upgrade quite quickly, so you can pick things up that aren't too old or heavily used.

 

I'm a Rega fan because they're made in England, spares/parts are readily available and they sound excellent for the price. They're also a nice to deal with smaller independent company and not part of a faceless corporation, which is important to me.

 

Re siting a TT, unless your floors are flimsy and you jump around whilst listening to music, you'll be fine and won't need trick isolation devices. Purpose built hi-fi racks and shelving from the likes of Atacama are ridiculously over-priced. High mass shelves are often counter-productive, because they store low frequency resonance. A good inexpensive hack is to buy a laminated bamboo cutting board (they're light, rigid and non-resonant) of suitable size and add adjustable spikes at each corner so it can be levelled. Put it on top of your sideboard or wherever and stand the TT on it. I've done that with my Planar 6 and it works very well. I can tap the rack it sits on firmly whilst a record is playing and no sound comes through my speakers.

[Hellzero]

This website gives you access to almost all secondhand hi-fi items...

 

I narrowed the search for turntables to U.K., good quest: https://www.hifishark.com/search?q=turntable

[Leonard Smalls]

https://www.emporiumhifi.com/head-office-norfolk-suffolk/manticore-mantra-turntable-with-logic-datum-ii-arm/

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

Rega turntables are great , and look real cool imho . For the money you can’t go wrong . The planar 2 I had at the time was a big upgrade from the previous Dual CDs-505 I had.

What I have noticed over the last decade or so, is the expansion of quality and choice of colours etc in the £250-£500 price point . A decent cartridge works wonders also as mentioned above .

[Dankology]

I love Rega turntables and have had a P6 for a few years but mine has the well known issue of humming as the arm nears the centre of the record and I also resent the fact that the stylus and cart are one unit so a worn needle requires replacement (or refurbishment) of the cartridge too.

 

Am thinking of getting an Audio Technica cart fitted via the RigB mount (check Facebook for this) to solve both issues.

 

A secondhand P2 or P3 with this set up planned for the future could be a within budget option.

 

It wouldn't help with Rega's poor grounding system or speed issues though 🤔 

 

My brother and I both picked up old Pioneer PL12d decks too - still pretty cheap, look ace and are easy to refurbish at home, even for a chimp-fingered imbecile like myself.

 

Sounds very different to the Rega - but in an attractive vintage way compared to the P6's very toppy clean sound.

 

Get one of each, obviously. 

Edited 14 hours ago by Dankology