Post your turntable setup...can't get enough of those spinners!

This will do

I'm scared of vinyl. If I had to go this route, I'd probably end up spending $$$$$ on it. That's why I don't even think of affordable stuff.

 

I got a AT-LP60 as my first table in 2013 when I was curious about the vinyl resurgence. Served me well, and just last month, I upgraded to another entry level table the U-Turn Orbit Plus. I got the cue lever (recommend) and got one of the better grado cartridges. I can speak for the ART DJPRE 2. That little pre-amp is impressive for the price. I'd recommend the U-Turn 10/10. Speakers wise, go to your local best buy and listen to them or audio shop. I had a decent sony ones for my older audio technica and they did okay, but I upgraded to Martin Logan Motion 15's and they are amazing. I use an integrated amp, the Marantz PM8005. My put together is well over the 1000 dollar budget, but whatever sounds best to you, do it. Best Buy is cool because you can take your music in! Some even have tables, so you can take records in to see what they sound like.

 

New AT 95

 

Bloody awful rumble, and can't figure out where to mount the cartridge ....


however ... has rejuvenated a bunch of records I had in storage and were covered in cat hair, cigarette ash, random gray lumps and unspeakable sticky patches

 

Got my Mitsubishi LT-10V working.
Linear tracking vertical playing Japanese 80's greatness.
I polished the acrylic, then had to fix the speed, was to fast.

only problem is it can not play clear records, uses light sensors to determine record size. To play this clear record I put masking tape over the lights.

 

Wow! Back then (80s) I had a (horizontal-only) linear-tracking deck, Akai, I think. It was quite strange to be able to press a button to go to next or previous track! (And even stranger that the sensor sometimes got it right).

Compared to any "normal" deck, though, the electronics and mechanics are absurdly complex. It was, as I suspected it would be, the only item in the kit that I had bought together to be replaced because of failure, rather than choice. But, while it worked, it was great fun to play and watch.

 

This one does not have the feature of a sensor to find tracks, but still cool. It does like quite complex inside.

 

I enlarged your photo, looked at the buttons, and realised that. After I had posted. Mine had heaps of electronics: like a dozen ICUs! Of course, these days the same would probably be put on one.

I recall the principle: as the stylus is moved by the groove, the arm moves like a conventional arm, but only a tiny amount, Sensors follow this, and move the mount along the y axis, always keeping up.

Even given the host of electronics, when mine failed I took it to a repair shop, and they said it only needed one spring, but that that was unobtainable. Nowadays, I probably wouldn't give up so easily

 

Yeah, so much stuff to go wrong, im glad all mine needed was a new belt, speed adjustment with pots, and polishing the front plexi.
So much more complex than my pioneer PL-12D. I opened that up, its literally just a motor, and wires going from tonearm to the rca ports.
When the schematic online for the Mitsubishi is this, IDK what it all is, but there is a lot of stuff.

 

Sheesh!

Not much to a traditional turntable, really... but somehow it gets made into much. And expensive much, too!

 

Have been a Roksan user since the mid '80s when the original Xerxes was released to the world. Changed to my current 20+ about 6 years ago. Since these were taken, I've changed the Roksan Artemiz arm to a Naim ARO, the Roksan reference PSU to a Vertere PSU and added a Trilogy 907 phono stage. The Naim stuff has been replaced by Teddy Pardo's amps.

 

New setup I picked up used, but the thing is practically brand new, today. PLX-1000 table, Nagaoka MP-150 cart, running into a Mani I've had as a backup for awhile. For the $550 total I have into this setup, it is treating me well. I'll probably pick up the KAB tonearm damper and make sure the cart is aligned well but otherwise, I'm not really going to do much here. I'm still quite smitten with what modern digital gear can do but I have a bunch of records I can't hear so I picked this up to at least get some different stuff playing in the room.

 

I was not even in the market for a turntable but my recent vintage audio binge had me checking local classifieds daily and I could not pass up these two models when they popped up for sale within days of each other. I was really fortunate to recently acquire not one but two vintage Sony Biotracer turntables from the 1980s. I was pretty confident that re-entry into the analog-verse would involve a Lenco or a Thorens for me and laying out several thousands of $ for a table, cart, phono stage, RCM and not to mention records. It turned out to be not that complicated, and I somehow ended up with a fully automatic, linear tracking, servo-controlled direct drive machine instead of an old-fashioned idler.

The first machine is a Sony PS-X800. This was basically Sony's all out R&D attempt at a turntable for a new decade, before being rushed to production due to start of the decline in the popularity of LP playback in the early 80s. It features Sony's 'Biotracer' arm technology which basically performs all sorts of real-time electronic adjustments to compensate for anti-skate and arm resonance (unwanted vibrations). While the 'Biotracer' tech was employed before in tables with pivoted tonearms, as we will see later below, the PS-X800 features a linear-tracking (tangential) tonearm that operates on a greased sled.



I am very, very lucky to have acquired this table and I am over the moon with my purchase. The seller was an analog nut with a home full of Lencos, Garrards, Thorens, tape decks, drawers full of high-end cartridges and had completely babied this table for the near-decade he had owned it. The dust cover is original (very rare as they have weak hinges known for cracking) and the unit was smuggled into Germany a year ago for servicing by one of the few technicians in the world still capable of actually working on a Biotracer mechanism.

I'm not sure how much I can speak to the sound given a lack of in-home experience with other High-End(tm) tables. I'm using a NOS Ortofon VMS 20 cartridge which the seller threw in for not much extra and I enjoy the sound very much. I read a brief review by another PS-X800 owner online which I will share:

"If you've ever heard a song on the radio, or YouTube and then bought the album and listened to it, that is what it sounds like. It sounds exactly like you think it should sound from having heard it, only richer and more detailed."

This is kind of hyperbolic, like a noob listening to a 'wire with gain' amp with no experience and claiming that it is totally transparent. Of course everything has a sound. But if we break down the basic functions of a turntable/tonearm combination to speed stability (down to the .999999% repeating percentile), lack of tracking error and rejection of outside energy (unwanted vibrations) then it can be said that the Sony's design addresses these each of these in a way to provide a neutral profile. Combined with the complete ease of setup and operation, this is my 'death do us part' table. I am sure I will experiment with other tables in the future but I don't see myself ever selling this one.

The second table, the PS-X600, is the little brother of the PS-X800 and not really as exciting or sexy, but for a second bedroom system it is more than fine. This one also has the Biotracer tech, albeit in a standard pivoted arm, and some cost-cutting measures like a more lightweight plinth and platter. The basic concept is the same though and the PS-X600 is a lot more affordable and common than the X800. Mine came mounted with a basic Shure cartridge which gets the job done but sounds a little muted on the top end for my taste. I have a NOS AT Signet cart which cost more than the table itself, and I am still debating if this table is worthy of it.



P.S. since there will undoubtedly be a renewed interest in vinyl on this forum with the release of the Schiit Sol, here are three big mistakes I made with my last go-around with vinyl playback:

1) Don't sell your record collection. I was a big dumb dumb and needed cash for something (the fact that I can't even remember what for is sign enough that it wasn't worth it) and took all my records to a store downtown to cash them out. I felt regret the day after and called the store to see if I could take them back but nearly all of them had already sold. Even if you try out vinyl and decide it's not for you at this present time, just put your records on a shelf and come back to them later. They will only appreciate in value anyway.

2) Don't buy your record collection on Discogs. I spent a lot of time on Discogs because I wanted specific albums and ended up outlaying a lot of cash for not many records in return. Besides, it takes all the fun out of record shopping. I would recommend spending time at record stores (duh), especially in the new arrivals section, yard sales, local classifieds of individuals selling off their private collections, pop-up record sales or fairs if they have them in your area, etc. This is a much better way to build up a catalog of music to enjoy without breaking the bank.

3) Be careful about new vinyl. The majority of sealed stuff sold in stores suck. The pressings are shitty, the masters are shitty, the sources (usually digital files) are shitty and it's all overpriced because pressing this stuff in 2019 is not cheap. You may as well listen to CDs.

 

So, I finally got off the lazy train and took some pics of my setup:

 

I always thought that one LP intake as is without skipping was the game. So skipping mechanism (surely convenient) killed a bit of magic, didn't it?

 

You know, we always could pick up the needle and move it! Especially when those new-fangled little levers came along to make it easy.


.

 

I think it may be a change in why we listen to vinyl. Many years ago, I loaded up my grandparents console record player with 4 or 5 records, turned the play switch, and listened away. Yeah it was hard on the records in hindsight. I enjoyed the hell out of though. I was mass consuming the music. Now with all the ways we can mass consume music, I play the album as the artist intended and enjoy. That’s my take on it.

 

Fair point

I like how turntables look and how crazy they can be, but am noob on the matter in general

 

Well, speaking as someone who was there at the time ...

I guess I have always had a preference for longer periods of continuity, rather than short bursts. As a musical analogy, I was naturally an album man rather than a singles man. And I came from classical music into the rock equivalent: one track could be a whole side.

However, Anyone who wanted to skip, repeat, or pick out tracks certainly did. And if anything stopped them, it was being stoned, not the nature of of the record player.

As a for instance, there were favourite morning tracks, favourite just-before bed tracks, and there was not always time or wish to play the whole side.

Compilations was a huge thing in the era of cassette tape. Not my thing, I preferred the original one-work-continuity of the original album. But many did.

Vinyl was and is much easy to track pick than any sort of tape, although scribbled index numbers could help... if one remembered to zero the counter at the start.(OK... the skip-to-next, which looked for silence on the tape, sometimes worked)

Vinyl only meant listening to a whole album if that was what you wanted to do.

/history!