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Good turntable to play vinyl?

MEKer

MEKer

Supporting member
May 30, 2006
6,081
3,586
#1
Looking to get a truly good turntable in medium price range for my son. Seeing cheap Chinese stuff (no thanks), but also would like to stay $200-300 maximum. Cannot afford stellar stuff, but at least something decent. So far only a Pioneer model looking good. Already have Bose speakers and a great receiver.

Anything else out there anyone can vouch for?

All the bigger manufacturers are not making them anymore like Philips, RCA, Magnavox, Fisher (they do have some for around around $1100!!), etc. Man, the old stereo stores were great back in the day!
 
#2
Check ebay. Get a direct drive turntable, replace the stylus with something nice. Plenty of good used Techniques direct drive turntables that will be as good as new with a new stylus.

If you're looking for true hi-fi, you will likely want to trade those Bose speakers in for something accurate and transparent. Bose are known for "having a sound" (hyped bass and treble).
 
#3
Direct drives are for DJ's. Check Ebay for a Thorens. I bought a TD 147 around 5 years ago. Sounds fantastic. I've only had cheaper direct drive turntables and this one sounds so much better. Rega also makes a good turntable.

Holy crap I just checked ebay, the price of Thorens turntables have increased a ton. If you are patient, you can find a good one for a decent price.
 
#4
Belt drives don't have a totally consistent rate of rotation in my experience. Then again I haven't tried a high end belt drive table. And yes, direct drive is important for DJing type stuff that is totally not relevant to you...
 
#12
There w as a Kickstarter project that made a.great table for 200 some dollars. It reviewed well in audio mags. I think it was called U-Turn or U- something. Made in America.
 
#13
I keep hearing GREAT things about the U-Turn Audio Orbit! Made by some college students that kickstarted it. It keeps getting incredible reviews and stands with turntables many times its price. If you order it they build it for you, and you can really make some great upgrades. Your son can also do some of the upgrades himself later for no additional pricing. If I were you I would get the most basic one and upgrade the stylus as much as you can. That's the hardest thing to get right when upgrading yourself. Then later if your son wants to put more into it he can.
 
#15
And I said:
If you're looking for true hi-fi, you will likely want to trade those Bose speakers in for something accurate and transparent. Bose are known for "having a sound" (hyped bass and treble).
Click to expand...

Actually, while the Bose Wave systems have that sound (and I'm personally a fan with my two radios), the speakers were a very different kettle of fish. The classic 900 series are really quite neutral in character which is what makes them excellent for classical music and jazz, and dissatisfying to folks looking for the "loudness" effect of enhanced top/bottom. They rely on their unique equalizer and don't sound like much without them--and they're crazy inefficient--but they don't have the "Wave" character.

To get back to the original question, though, a good used table is the way to go. There are lots of fine older Technics, Dual, and even Thorens or Lenco platters available--although eBay can be a crapshoot on this one. Craig's List or equivalent is a better bet if you know what you're doing since you can at least confirm performance. If you're determined to go new, this Pioneer table might do the trick in your price range:

Amazon.com: Pioneer PL-30 Audiophile Stereo Turntable with Dual-Layered Chassis and Built-in Phono Equalizer: Electronics

Pioneer's making some great audio gear for very affordable prices these days.
 
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#16
I know a bit about turntables because I refurbish hi-fi turntables of all types from their heyday ~ 1960s-1990. I would suggest you keep these things in mind:

  1. the basic job of a turntable (TT) is to spin the record at a constant velocity (33 1/3 RPM or 45 are the most common, record collectors may want 78 RPM).
  2. the tone arm has the job of holding the cartridge with its stylus so that the stylus can track the recorded grove and translate those groves into vibrations that end up coming out of your speakers
  3. the challenges of doing these two basic jobs have been solved in various ways and there are examples of excellent and poor execution of the same solutions. That is, some direct drive turntables are among the very best every made, and some are among the crappiest. Same with belt drive ... and other things like tonearm designs.
So, what this means is that one wants to choose a TT based on your actual needs. If you tell us the answers to a few questions I can better help you

  • is that receiver one that has a phono input? If not, we need to bear that in mind as the signal from a record cartridge needs a dedicated input to work correctly
  • do you already have a lot of records or are the records to be played mostly going to be newly purchased? I ask because I wonder if you'll be playing older records that may not have had easy lives ...
  • is the turntable owner someone that likes automatic players or would they prefer a manual or semi-auto turntable. The first one puts the tonearm on the record and returns to rest after the record is finishes playing; with semi-auto, one places the tonearm on the record to start it, and it picks up and may or may not return at the end; and manual is you got it, totally non-automatic.
Also, there are many brands that made great stuff during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s that one can get fairly cheaply because they are not collectors items and these turntables will work well for most people. The main trick is not getting something that is mismatched in terms of the audio quality of the output relative to the sound system you'll be playing your music on. You want to get a turntable and cartridge (matching these to each other is key!) that are good enough for the rest of your system at the very least. You also don't need the Rolls Royce of turntables for a kid's system. There are some very, very high end hi-fis that cost many thousands of dollars with $5000 turntables. Not very many people need anything like that for their record players!


I hope this helps and feel free to ask more questions and please give us more info on the system you'll be hooking this turntable to.
 
#18
Humbled, there are some two or more channel receivers with phono inputs on them that are still made. If one looks for what we used to call 'hi fi stereo gear' you can find [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] at shops like this, for instance. Dennon and, I believe Yamaha still make some. Thrift store receivers from the 1970s and 1980s are often cheap and sound great. If you must have new, at that same shop I linked above, [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] is their 'analogue' aka turntable stuff. I'm old enough I still call the media 'records', not 'vinyl'

The turntable jmlee suggested above at Amazon does have the electronics necessary to make its output work with a receiver or other sound machine that doesn't have dedicated phono inputs. That's most everything that is a stereo system made since the age of CDs and digital.

My recommendation is to avoid any turntable unit that uses USB outputs, the sound is horrendous relative to how good records really sound.

To the OP, MEKer. The key really is matching a turntable to your current receiver. What type of inputs does it have?
 
#19
I wanted to add this to a turntable thread & there are heaps of them, so I just chose the most recent one I saw with "turntable" in the title:

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I grew up buying from Crutchfield, because they're in my back yard. My first in-dash re-fit was from CF, my current TV & soundbar also. (from their "open box" section)
 

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