New Vs Vintage Turntable?

[Dan Dare]

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

For some of us those pops, clicks, general surface noise and low frequency rumble just get in the way of the music.

 

Unless you have a poor record deck, low frequency rumble should not be an issue. My quite modest deck has virtually none (you have to press an ear to a speaker when the stylus is on the run-in/run-out grooves and there is no music playing to hear the faintest hint of it). Ditto surface noise. Once the music kicks in, both are un-noticeable.

 

Look after your vinyl and pops/clicks should not be an issue.

 

As I say above, different strokes for different folks. You do you, we'll do us and we'll all be happy.

[prowla]

7 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

There's sound reasons for using a separate power amp - keeping low level signal processing away from high power amplification can lead to big (ISH!) gains in fidelity... I even do this with my bass set up, though I use a PA power amp rather than bass-specific.

At one time I even used a passive pre-amp (some swear by 'em) though that was only because it came with a pair of Lumley 120w valve mono blocks (beasts! took 20 minutes warm up before you could play music, and 20 minutes on standby before powering off in order to preserve the 8 x 6550 valves per channel).

But sound principles can go out of the window with hifi - we had a sound recordist at the BBC who swore by directional cables, cable lifters, high capacitance carbon fibre cables, separate hifi earth spike and those funny little Shakti stones that improved the sound immeasurably (!). And this was despite his BBC training!

 

Just last year I dropped in to a Hi-Fi shop and got chatting; one of the folks there said they had a system set up and would I like to have a listen.

So, I sat down in front of the rather expensive, out of my price range system and he put on some music.

I said it was a bit disappointing and was lacking something, it seemed a bit lacklustre and had no life; he said hang on a mo and went and tweaked some settings.

Suddenly the missing stuff was there.

I asked him what he'd done and he said he'd switched the mode of the power amp to Class-A.

[BigRedX]

13 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

Look after your vinyl and pops/clicks should not be an issue.

 

Some pops and clicks are already there the first time the record is played. That's because it's a crap pressing from the late 70s or early 80s made on recycled vinyl.

 

Almost all the music I want to listen to that only exists on vinyl is in this format. It comes from indie bands putting out their own singles and albums where price is everything. There were plenty of bands back then for whom scraping together the £200-£300 required to record and press 500 copies of their single was the absolute limit of what they could afford and that was for hand-stamped white labels and a sleeve comprising a sheet of photocopied A4 paper folded around and stapled to the plain paper sleeve that the pressing had been shipped in. Most of these releases had defects before they'd even been played. If you were on good terms with your record shop you might be able to get them to play through all their copies trying to find one with less obvious problems.

 

Also IME it didn't matter how well I looked after my records they would eventually pick up additional damage simply from being taken out to be played, usually on my favourite track.

 

These days anything I buy on vinyl gets played twice only. Once to check the levels and peak signal and a second time to record it into my computer. If it is available on any digital format I would buy it on that format instead.

[Leonard Smalls]

27 minutes ago, prowla said:

switched the mode of the power amp to Class-A.

Seems like a weird option in an amp! A pure class A amp is generally just that, because they're so inefficient and run so hot they tend to be only 20-30w (like the MF A1, or Sugden Masterclass - they're excellent, btw!). More powerful class As like some of the Pass Labs offerings are enormous and expensive beasts!

A well designed class AB will run in class A for about 10% of it's rated power - frinstance my Bryston uses class A for the first 90w, the following 850w are in B... And as any fule knowz, you need power for proper bass reproduction!

 

[Pow_22]

Ive got a very modest set up that nearly all came from charity/pawn shops. 

 

The deck is an old JVC LA-10 which goes into a Cambridge 640P pre amp then into a Cambridge 540 Azure power amp.  Finally the speakers are Missions.   In total probably cost me less than £100 and sounds pretty decent.  By no means high end or expensive but certainly sounds ok

Edited 5 hours ago by Pow_22

[ezbass]

47 minutes ago, prowla said:

I don't understand how you can separate the quality of the music from the quality of the reproduction.

Content vs sound quality I guess, subject to one’s musical preferences of course. For instance, I’ll listen to, let’s say John Mayer, on a crappy set of PC speakers and enjoy it. Whereas, I don’t care how good a system is, someone I don’t like (the list is extensive) will always going to have me each reaching for the off switch, despite the pristine reproduction.

[xgsjx]

2 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

It's funny how people who differ over whether 10" speakers sound better than 15's and upgrade pickups on perfectly good basses also differ over vinyl and CD's

 

If like me you have a collection of vinyl at home and just want to play it on something that won't degrade it any faster than you have to then any of the modern £500ish turntables will do the trick. I'd probably avoid vintage decks just because these are mechanical devices with bearings that wear. I want something I can use for the next 20 years without having to source parts. Once you get into hearing the difference it depends upon the cartridge you are using and the amp and speakers. There's no point sonically spending £1500 on a turntable if the speakers aren't equally revealing. The argument for the used Linn is surely that you like the way it looks and you can get your money back if you sell it whilst the poeple who lusted for them 40 years ago are still alive and feeling stirrings (note to self: sell that old Sex Pistols single)

 

FWIW I have a Rega Planar 2 with the better tone arm fitted, can't remember which one. I've had it for years and have only had to replace the belt and needle. You don't have to replace the whole cartridge but spare needles aren't always available for such old gear. I've gone from Thorens TD160 (rumbled like hell) to a Pioneer 12D to the Rega. I used the Technics 1200 in my disco days. A mate has the Linn with the top arm at the time and the external power supply. It did sound better than mine in the shop but not through his amp and speakers. We spent many happy hours comparing systems to find that some records sounded great on his system and others better on mine. Nowadays we do almost all of our listening via streaming but it is nice sometimes to get the vinyl out and wallow in nostalgia, definitely worth spending £500 on that. Go for a decent cartridge though, it makes more difference than the turntable and will conserve your vinyl.

 

Then just love what you have, if you've ever played bass with a drummer I doubt your hearing is still 100% anyway.

There’s a few factors that I have to take into account.

 

Looks: I’d happily spend £500 on a turntable, but the Mrs is big on interior design, so it has to match lookwise with the living room, and a sub £2k Rega or Pro-Ject is too minimalist (as are many decks).  
 

Sound quality:  This is probably more important for the Mrs, as like you say, being a musician means my hearing isn’t even 80%. 😂

But don’t get me wrong, even us old deafies can tell the difference in quality.  We just don’t hear the very top like we used to. 

Build quality: This has always been an important thing to both of us.  I’d rather spend more on one good quality thing where you can see & feel the quality, rather than buy something that feels cheap & probably have to replace it after a few years.

I know that there are many good quality turntables to be had for under £500, but I’ve searched high & low for a decent deck that ticks all 3 boxes. 

[BigRedX]

The other thing to remember is that not every record was recorded at Abbey Road or similar "professional" recording studios.

 

My first venture into vinyl was recorded at a cheap 4-track studio situated in an outbuilding behind a musical instrument shop on the outskirts of Leicester. The equipment was basic, mostly repurposed PA gear and the only effect was reverb/delay from running a feed through a spare 2-track tape machine. Our instruments weren't much better being a mixture of very low budget and home-made. Our previous releases had been on cassettes that we had duplicated ourselves in real time and consequently we mixed the new recordings in the same way, forgetting that we didn't need to compensate for two generations of tape bounce before they reached our listeners, The end result is thin and weedy and very trebly and no amount of flash HiFi is going to make it sound better. In fact the worse the playback system is the better it sounds.

[Leonard Smalls]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

not every record was recorded at Abbey Road or similar "professional" recording studios.

It's the old "Garbage In, Garbage Out" ...

If it's a poor recording and/or a poor pressing it's never going to sound good!

Saying that, I occasionally have a singles night (!) where I flop out my 7 inchers from the late 70s/early 80s, and while not having the absolute fidelity of something like Al McDowell's Time Peace, or Nazaire's"Who's blues?", they don't sound bad at all, especially things like The Monochrome Set's "He's Frank" or DAF's "Kebabtraume"...

They, however, have the immortal words scratched into the end groove - "a Porky  Prime Cut". Always wanted to have a record of my own mastered by Porky!

[prowla]

1 hour ago, ezbass said:

Content vs sound quality I guess, subject to one’s musical preferences of course. For instance, I’ll listen to, let’s say John Mayer, on a crappy set of PC speakers and enjoy it. Whereas, I don’t care how good a system is, someone I don’t like (the list is extensive) will always going to have me each reaching for the off switch, despite the pristine reproduction.

Well, my point is that the sound quality defines the quality of the content which reaches your ears.

However, I do get what you're saying; I've been to a couple of Hi-Fi shows where a lot of suppliers were playing lounge jazz, which simply bores me.

[BigRedX]

35 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

They, however, have the immortal words scratched into the end groove - "a Porky  Prime Cut". Always wanted to have a record of my own mastered by Porky!

 

My shitty vinyl effort is a Porky Prime Cut! 

 

Back in those days I think almost every UK pressing I owned had been cut by either Porky (George Peckham) or Bilbo (Dennis Blackham).

[BigRedX]

39 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

It's the old "Garbage In, Garbage Out" ...

If it's a poor recording and/or a poor pressing it's never going to sound good!

 

Which is the point I was trying to make earlier in this thread. 

 

It was fine if you were a big selling artist signed to a major record label , but for those of us without record label backing, trying to make our recordings available to the public and maybe played by John Peel or Tommy Vance, meant having to use a budget studio, and then getting our record pressed at a some cheap pressing plant using recycled vinyl as this was the only way we could afford to release it. 

 

Compare and contrast with a digital file whether it is on a CD or a download there are a lot fewer obstacles to audio fidelity.

 

The music I've released on digital formats sounds loads better even though much of it was recorded at home rather than at a proper studio simply because the production process doesn't place limitations on the sound.

 

 

[Leonard Smalls]

To be fair, not every Porky Prime Cut sounds good, I spose they did the best they could and scrawled their X on it!

And most of the singles I've got from that period were Porky's so I thought he only did good stuff, ie what I liked. Seemed just about every decent punk and new wave record was a Porky!

[BigRedX]

1 minute ago, Leonard Smalls said:

To be fair, not every Porky Prime Cut sounds good, I spose they did the best they could and scrawled their X on it!

 

Even though the recording wasn't up to much, apparently the lyrics did make him laugh!

[Dankology]

Just reading the comments regarding the quality of old vinyl pressings... I've pretty much given up on new vinyl as I had a horrible run of really noisy, clicky records straight out of the shrinkwrap.

 

Maybe things are better now but certainly around three years ago I got the impression that the records were very much being banged out safe in the knowledge that most of them were being framed rather than listened to.

 

A Facebook reminder popped up this week: 9 years ago I apparently paid £25 on Gumtree for a stack of records that included Generation Terrorists, Last Splash, The Hounds of Love, Never For Ever, The Sensual World, Graceland, the Best of Smokey Robinson, Gold Mother, Stutter, REM's Out of Time, London 0 Hull 4, a Northside LP and a 12" of Voodoo Ray among a few other things. The last two nearly went straight to the charity shop but are apparently each worth twice what I paid for the whole lot. All in, probably one of my best buys ever and I can't imagine ever finding a similarly well-priced stash.

 

But maybe those three original Nick Drake LPs are out there waiting for me in someone's sideboard.

 

This has made me think of some of the best bargains I've had over the years - I really got into vinyl at the right time when the pressings were still pretty good and shops were selling off old and new stuff for pennies. I got to listen to so much music I wouldn't have otherwise been able to afford. Still haunted by some of the ones I didn't nab when I had the chance. 

[dmccombe7]

6 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

It's funny how people who differ over whether 10" speakers sound better than 15's and upgrade pickups on perfectly good basses also differ over vinyl and CD's

 

If like me you have a collection of vinyl at home and just want to play it on something that won't degrade it any faster than you have to then any of the modern £500ish turntables will do the trick. I'd probably avoid vintage decks just because these are mechanical devices with bearings that wear. I want something I can use for the next 20 years without having to source parts. Once you get into hearing the difference it depends upon the cartridge you are using and the amp and speakers. There's no point sonically spending £1500 on a turntable if the speakers aren't equally revealing. The argument for the used Linn is surely that you like the way it looks and you can get your money back if you sell it whilst the poeple who lusted for them 40 years ago are still alive and feeling stirrings (note to self: sell that old Sex Pistols single)

 

FWIW I have a Rega Planar 2 with the better tone arm fitted, can't remember which one. I've had it for years and have only had to replace the belt and needle. You don't have to replace the whole cartridge but spare needles aren't always available for such old gear. I've gone from Thorens TD160 (rumbled like hell) to a Pioneer 12D to the Rega. I used the Technics 1200 in my disco days. A mate has the Linn with the top arm at the time and the external power supply. It did sound better than mine in the shop but not through his amp and speakers. We spent many happy hours comparing systems to find that some records sounded great on his system and others better on mine. Nowadays we do almost all of our listening via streaming but it is nice sometimes to get the vinyl out and wallow in nostalgia, definitely worth spending £500 on that. Go for a decent cartridge though, it makes more difference than the turntable and will conserve your vinyl.

 

Then just love what you have, if you've ever played bass with a drummer I doubt your hearing is still 100% anyway.

That about sums it up for me. 👌

Dave