I am buying my first one later this week, and was wondering how many of you guys are into Vinyl?

i found a Dual CS 5000 with a Ortofon catridge on craigslist locally for 300$. I am planning on buying a NAD P2i phono preamp..

Anyhow, i am pretty excited about trying the vinyl thing out, to see if it is something i want to get serious about or not.

Hi dakkon,

I have one that I almost never use, despite keeping my relatively huge collection of vinyl around, mostly for nostalgic purposes. I can pull out an LP album jacket and tell you where and when I bought it in my youth. I've replaced much of the vinyl with CDs except for long out-of-print albums that aren't available on CD.

Dual turntables are decent, but I'd replace the Ortofon cartridge with a Shure M97he or a Grado cartridge. Back when I was editor in chief of hi-fi magazines in Canada during the vinyl era, the Ortofon cartridges never did very well in our tracking tests. They'd mistrack and distort on heavily modulated (loud) grooves. The Shure cartridges are much better trackers and have smoother and more linear frequency responses than the Ortofons. The Grado cartridges are also generally excellent, very close in performance to the Shures.

Regards,
Alan

I didn't know that about the Shure cartridges. I used to have a Technics turntable with a Shure cartridge, because of the high ratings back around 1975. I wish I still had my 300 disk vinyl collection. I took very good care of them, but had bad financial problems in my first marriage and sold them all.

Thanks for the tip alan.

I have another question for you, many of the "people on the internet" have said that their vinyl records sound "WAY" better than the same song from a CD.


I would like to hear your thoughts on this, if you don't mind.

Alex

<grabs popcorn>

in my mind, this favoritism for vinyl has most of the time been a thing belonging to "purists".

at the time, i used to take excellent care of my vinyl discs, and invariably, after a few playings, i would hear faint or weak clicks and other kinds of noise floating all around my music room: on the sides and in the back. also the noise level was always distracting, specially when listening at realistic levels.

when CD's came out, i did not wait long before jumping in, and the sound was very good; better, in fact, than the black discs.

my turntable was of very good quality, with a Shure V15 Type IV.

it was great in some ways, but not up to the lovel of CD's.

YMMV.

J.B. a large part of what drove my question was that on the turn table forums, there are people who started out with CD's, that are not of the "vinyl generation" if you will. These are the people who are saying that the vinyl records sound better than their CD's.

The only possible bias that i can think of, would be a wanting to validate their turntable purchase which is entirely possible. However, i found it interesting that the digital cohort (which i am part of) is now becoming fond of vinyl, there have been several articles written discussing the growing popularity of vinyl.

So, i figure for 500$ or so, between the turntable and preamp, i would give it a try. If i decide it's not for me, i should be able to sell the turntable+preamp for about 400$, the turntable has fully depreciated, not much of a loss there.

On a side note, since a lot of us are DIY oriented type of people... I haven't seen many treads like this on other stereo/HT forums.... Jump to around page 8, that is when the photos start showing up.

http://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=9098 s

i agree with you that there can be a multitude of reasons for the resurgence of vinyl, but i think that the thing needs so much special care that not many will adopt it for long periods of time.

that special care also applies to proper placing of the turntable, isolating it from any vibration, a HPF, special equipment to clean the disc, etc... lots of TLC. (Tender Loving Care).

people often buy 2 CD's, the second one as a spare, "just in case"; that would almost be a must when buying vinyl.

wouldn't that be in the same line of thinking as tube amps vs. transistorized amps?

I don't know, hence my question

Hi dakkon (Alex),

First of all, the so-called "resurgence" of vinyl just isn't. It's 0.0001% of consumers who are "into" vinyl, a miniscule number compared to the era before the introduction of the CD and digital recording.

Look, vinyl is fun. You get nice big graphics on the album cover, and it's entertaining to watch the disc slowly revolving and the tonearm work its way across the disc. Tried watching a CD playback? A huge bore.

It's also very involving as a hobby, because you have to make certain the tonearm is perfectly set up, aligned and balanced, with the correct tracking force. You need to carefully clean and de-staticize the disc before playing (there are lots of nifty accessories to help you do this, including cleaning machines). If you don't take care of vinyl and fastidiously clean it before every play, you'll go mad with all the ticks and pops and surface noise during playback.

When everything is set up carefully, preferably with a custom tonearm and expensive cartridge, vinyl can sound remarkably good, almost indistinguishable from a CD if the original masters are good. However, even with all that, things can get nasty sounding and distorted as the tonearm reaches the inner grooves, where even the best cartridges have trouble tracking loud dynamics. This never happens with a CD or digital recording.

I agree with everything that J.B. says, and many of the "purist" tweakophile bunch who love vinyl simply do so because analog recording--vinyl--is easy to understand: a stylus wiggles in a groove, modulating a magnet between coils of wire, generating an analog voltage that the preamp and amp amplify.

In my experience, most tweaks don't understand digital recording; they can't comprehend it, plus it actually hints of pure science and math, which is what it is. There has always been a distinct anti-science bias in high-end audio magazines, which is why they won't do controlled blind testing. They like to believe that audio equipment has mystical qualities, and that extends to vinyl.

As to younger enthusisasts, they're either unwilling to do careful comparisons, or simply ignorant of all of vinyl's many audible limitations or perhaps they simply tune them out. The power of psychological bias is huge. There are thousands of awful-sounding recordings on vinyl, and lots of those have been transferred to CD, and sound just as bad on CD. Conversely, there are wonderful sounding analog masters, which once transferred to CD, are a revelation--no surface noise, no tick and pops, no inner-groove distortion, huge dyamics (far greater than an LP can encompass), plus utter freedom from audible wow and flutter. And no deterioration with repeated playings.

The first time I heard a digital recording of a grand piano (at an AES meeting in Toronto in the late 1970s), totally free of flutter (the slight wavering in pitch that's inherent in all vinyl playback and mastering), it was a revelation. This was before the introduction of the compact disc. It was a digital recording played back on a Sony U-matic VCR and all of the recording engineers present were thrilled with the distortion free sound and silent background.

Anyway, it's kind of an apples/oranges comparison. I don't discount the warm, fuzzy feeling that lots of enthusiasts get watching their LPs revolve and fondling those big record jackets, but it's an obsolete technology, like vacuum tubes and their pretty glowing filaments.

Have fun with your turntable and vinyl discs. But embracing it over digital recordings is like wanting a laptop computer with vacuum tubes (it would crush your lap!) Would you prefer a nice old antique CRT TV set, with its 100-pound cathode ray picture tube over a plasma or LCD flat screen? Or perhaps a tube-powered VCR? (It would take up an entire room and require its own air-cooling system.)

Cheers,
Alan

Some nostalgia.

In the small town I grew up in, there was a woman that ran a record shop. She reminded me of the wicked witch on OZ. The only time I bought a record from her was a Beach Boys album with the song Honey on it. When I got it home, it was so warped that it made my needle jump the track every time it spun around.

So, I took it back and she placed it on her player, which had a smaller in diameter platter and it played fine on hers. She tried to talk me into keeping it. I refused and she very reluctantly let me pick another album. This time it was a Vanilla Fudge album and my first introduction to that group. I decided I like Vanilla Fudge better at that point in my life anyway.

this is great writing, Alan. :-)

i forgot to say in my previous post that i equate "purists" to "conservatives".

tradition is king and it cannot change in the face of "adversity".

about the TLC, that tonearm i had was very good, but it wasn't optimally working in conjunction with the Shure V15, i had to drill many 2 mm. holes in the body of the cartridge holder in order to get the best of the Shure/arm combination.

even a laptop which would have no ic's but instead discrete transistors and capacitors and the like would crush you.

my pc has millions of transistors; how would that fit in those small spaces?

ENIAC i think had 60 000 tubes and it needed a huge room with huge air conditioners...and it broke down about every hour.

ah, the good old times!

Well, in the basement of the computer school I went to was an old Univac computer that took up about half of the room. It was an L-shaped device with a large printer and card reader/punch built in it. It had real core memory that amounted to 4k. We would test our smallish rpg and assembler programs that we wrote on it. Load in the supervisor from a deck of cards, then load in the compiler from another deck of cards, then our program from a smaller deck of cards, plus the data cards, then after much spinning, clicking, and large clatter from the printer, we got our program results.

This is the only time I remember having to use Alter instructions, which changed the compiled version of the program as it ran so the same code could perform more than one function.

did you ever try to calculate the value of Pi on that computer, and if so, to how many decimals? and how much time did it take?

Hi J.B.,

Thanks for your comments. Glad you enjoyed it.

My old custom turntable, a Scottish Ariston (much like the Linn) had an SME tonearm (they now cost thousands; I think I paid about $400 for it, a lot of dough in the early '70s) that I spent many hours aligning with a special tonearm protractor.

And yes to your remarks on the laptop with separate transistors. My comment on the tube VCR was prompted by my brief experience working at CFPL-TV, in London, Ontario, in 1965, my first job out of college. The video recorder was a huge Ampex vacuum-tube machine that used 2-inch-wide open-reel video tape and took up an entire room with a high-pressure AC system to cool all the vacuum tubes. It was black and white and of course, Standard Definition. I marveled at its complexity.

Regards,
Alan

Nope. Never did. We had either too much home work or partying to do instead.

I by no means have any intention of geting rid of my Oppo BD-83. I will keep it as well as al of my digital media. However, like i said earlier, i would like to see what vinyl is like.

I very well may decide that i don't want to deal with all of the extra stuff that you talk about Alan, please keep in mind i am at the infancy of my understanding what is involved with using vinyl. Being part of the "digital age" cleaning a record prior to listening to, ect, ect, may prove to be something that i don't want to deal with.

I do think that i would like to get a digital copy and a vinyl copy of the exact same record, so that i can do my own comparison between the BD83, and the turntable.


Also, i completely 100% agree with your perception of the audio industry's resist to "scientific testing". If there was scientific testing, then these companies that charge 2,000$+ for a pair of speaker wire would ALL go out of business. There is scientific proof that silver is a better conductor than copper. As silver tarnishes the oxidation actually improves the conductance of the material. There has only been 1 brand of speakers that i personally could hear an audible improvement over my Axiom's. These were a pair of wilson's that retailed for 20 or 25k$ a pair.

Just earlier today when i was buying a phono preamp, the gentleman at spearitsound was using additives like "warmer". When i asked him to quantify "warmer", he changed the subject and made a recommendation based on a quantifiable metric, which was build quality and components used.

I have B&W speakers in my bedroom. and to be honest, i bought them because i liked the way they look, not because they "sound better". to me they pretty much sound the exact same as my axioms..

So i would like see if I can hear any difference. Like i said before, this may be just a hobby.

Thank you for your input Alan and J.B. both, i do appreciate your experience and opinion as both of you seem to have extensive experience with turntables, and LP's.

This is just a hobby and finding things out for yourself is the fun.

just for fun, i just checked how many transistors compose my cpu + gpu;

the total comes out to 1 982 000 000;
almost 2 billion.
incredible!

I just wonder where they find all of those microscopic people to soldier them all together.

it's done with genetically engineered microbes, along with some ultra secret magical formulas to increase work precision.
it's also said that they, like cows, like Mozart and that increases production.

Mozart? Hmmm. I would of thought Lady Gaga.

i wanted to try my new scientific calculator, so i took the number of transistors in both my cpu and gpu (Q6600 G0 + Nvidia GTX 280) and converted those to a set of tubes that would be separated one from another by 2.5 in. on a board (around 25 tubes per square ft.)

a board containing all those 1 982 000 000 tubes would occupy a space of 2.84 square miles.
in my pc, the total area of those transistors occupy only a few square inches.

Great post, Alan! Makes me think of the 1,000+ LP's I left behind on the Mexican border 20 years ago. I miss them only as period pieces, nothing more. I don't miss their acquired noises. I don't miss moving them in milk crates @ 40 lb. ea. (that's about 2 stone for Canadians). I had a Rega, Planar 3 with that cool 7 lb. glass platter.

And I miss fold-outs, die-cuts, 24 x 36" posters, 12 x 12" photo booklets, printed lyrics for which an electron microscope is not necessary, etc. It'd kill me to lay out twice as much for a new release on vinyl than it costs on CD. And I'm gonna miss them, too, when they go away.

Downloads are just not sexy.

I'm resistant to the download idea. Don't care for it at all. I've never done it, and probably never will.

Brian, we're both pushin' 60! I don't think anyone expects us to welcome any changes kindly, and I don't plan on disappointing any of them. You in?

I don't think there's a single company whose R & D demographics breakout includes Bucket-listers.

We're just supposed to buy the very latest in geriatrica that they show us on TV.

My next big purchase is a defibrolator, and I'm gonna learn to to use it on myself.

I just bought my own version of defibrillator today. It's called the Shakira: En Vivo Desde Paris concert video.

2 stone? That's in the U.K., you nut! Ha, ha. We're metric up here, which I've accepted very reluctantly. I still think in pounds, inches, yards and miles.
Thanks for your nice comments.

Loved the cool Rega glass platter. So true about downloads.

Alan

when i wrote this above, i expected someone to reply something like:
haha, i could have done that in my head, no need for a scientific calculator!

Back to the topic, I have a turntable hooked up to the recroom rig. My son, who is really into music and has a 4 string and a 5 string bass guitar, enjoys listening to some of my albums from the 70's and 80's. I don't think the Climax Blues Band, Edgar Winter, and other good music from that era ever made it to CD.

Looks like those two did make it to CD, if you were interested.

I do. I play records at least 50% of the time.

And guess what? Vinyl still sounds better than cds.

Of course, you need a good record pressing, turntable, cartridge set-up, phono pre, etc.

Alan, you need to dust off that turntable and do an a/b comparison sometime. You have forgotten how deep, rich and real vinyl sounds. You seem to only remember the flaws.

Yes, vinyl is a flawed delivery medium, but it is still %100 analog and conveys a quality that continues to elude the ones and zeros.

It is 2011 and digital still cannot truly sound like the best analog. It flattens it, hardens it and loses a certain punch, depth of audio field and realness... and for a lack of a better word, soul. Why is that?

Go to any professional music or movie production forum and read what is still being debated about the subject (digital vs. analog).

Analog still wins out over digital. Film is preferred over HD video, tape/analog processing is preferred over digital.

One day digital may be the perfect medium for capturing analog "events", but for now it lacks something that the "math" has not fully explained.

And it ain't just nostalgia...

Are Pro-Ject turntables any good?

there has never been a perfect way of reproduction, there is none now, and i don't think there will ever be.
every means of reproduction has its own problems, and sometimes, the source of the problems is the producers themselves.

the word "perfect" is, in reality, a pure fiction, like eternal, pure, etc...

you should try and play some sine waves and look at them on an oscilloscope to see what happens at high volumes and also in the inner parts of an analog disc; better yet, to illustrate how attacks are reproduced, see what a square wave looks like on the leading edge of the wave.

Very much so!

Check out the Needle Doctor if your interested in vinyl, they are a great resource.

Ahh that's good. Are their budget turntables <$500 worth it, or are there better options out there (not buying used)?

There's a lot of bang-for-the-buck with entry level stuff from ProJect, Music Hall, Sota, Rega, etc.

But you can easily spend another $500.00 just for a quality cart/stylus!

I think the $1200.00 range is where you get the best "bang" when it comes to turntables these days but I wouldn't hesitate to jump on one of these if my budget was $500.00:

Music Hall MMF-2.2

Check out the reviews and videos on YouTube. They also have a lot of good instructional stuff for setting up your kit out there.

This is another budget turntable that gets pretty good reviews.

http://www.needledoctor.com/Rega-RP1-Turntable?sc=2&category=46

Also, for the Rega's there are a lot of upgrades that one can make to improve the quality of play back. I decided not to get a rega, because if i do choose to "upgrade" i will buy another table, and didn't want to wind up buying small upgrades for an entry level table (i know i would have wanted to "tinker" and modify it), and wind up having way more $$ into the table than i planned on.

I only have 2 records right now, and they are both in pretty horrible condition. However, i can say there IS a difference in the "sound" between the vinyl that i have and all of the digital music i have heard on the same system.. Can i say it sounds better.. nope, but it is different.. I also got to experience some of the "ticks and pops " that Alan was talking about.. However, it made for a different experience, maybe imperfection is more enjoyable for some, the imperfection adds to the experience.

So, for now i am stuck with my 2 records, one of which is an Iron Maiden record that i bought at a garage sale when i was around 10, because as Alan pointed out the artwork is pretty interesting on some of these records...


I am going to try to get some Jimi Hendrix, and Lenny Kravitz records soon. I went to half price books yesterday, but they did not have anything that i was interested in. Going though the records was a new experience for me though, you don't get the same experience from pushing the "download now" button....



bluejay, there was a project 2.1 turntable on CL in my area for 150$, used... The same guy had the Dual CS5000 that i wound up buying. Members of the vinyl form i have joined said the Dual would be a MUCH wiser buy. I made the conscious decision to buy used, because...

A) if i decide that vinyl is not my thing... if i buy something that is fully depreciated then i should get close to 100% of my money back upon resale.

B) if i decide i like vinyl and want to upgrade, i will be able to sell my first table for close to 100%, due to it being fully depreciated..


I bought this preamp, it seems to be the most popular and highest regarded in the price range i wanted to be within.

http://www.needledoctor.com/Cambridge-Audio-Azur-640P-Phono-Preamp?sc=2&category=35249


If you look at the vinylengine link i posted earlier, there is a 40page thread on how to DIY upgrade this preamp, if you are handy with a soldering iron and want to tinker with the electronics.

Thanks alot audiosavant and dakkon. The reason I asked about pro-ject is because the Monitor Audio dealer that is local sells them.

The Paradigm dealer sells Marantz and Audio-Technica turntables. Other than that I am stuck with places like future shop and best buy or the used market.

Needle doctor has a lot of options. They also ship international and via USPS with reasonable shipping rates (insted of UPS) which is a good start.

The Dual that i got was made in 87... however, i would not completly discount the used market. The Dual that i have sold for 1,200$ in 87, which was a considerable amount of money back then.. From what i have found, the type of people that have nice turntables that are selling them. Usually take very good care of them. When i bought the one i did, i could tell the guy was still quite attached to it... The reason the guy gave for selling his table was that his wife is having surgery on the 20th, and he needed the money for the deductible, i guess it is a quite expensive surgery.

I dont know if you have every looked at audigon.com or not, but i bought one of my amps off of there. The guy i bought it from is a CPA, that was upgrading his system..


From my experience you will find people who care about their stuff, unlike like someone with a 50$ boombox that is trying to get some quick cash off of CL that doesn't give a crap about his stuff, and just wants to put some coin in his pocket.....

Good luck, so far i am enjoying my turntable and 2 records

audiosavant,

You may simply prefer the euphonic coloration of vinyl playback to digital recording and playback ("euphonic" means "pleasing to the ear") simply because digital produces a more linear--a flatter and smoother frequency response--than the majority of phono cartridges.

The reason this comparison is of an apples/oranges variety is that unless you do a lab measurement, you have no idea of the frequency response variations of a typical phono cartridge, which often yield a slightly rolled-off high end or depressed midrange--softer sounding and more euphonic. But that does not mean analog is "better"; you may simply like the sound of vinyl playback on your cartridge and preamp better. Very few phono cartridges yield linear frequency responses. The reason I recommend the Shure and Grado cartridges is that in the lab measurements performed by AudioScene magazine (I was equipment reviewer for that magazine, and eventually editor of its descendant, Sound Canada and later, Sound&Vision Canada), those cartridges produced almost ruler-flat frequency response from 20 Hz to 15 kHz.

The analog/digital comparisons also ignore magnetic phono preamp response errors, althought better quality preamps tend to be very smooth.

Most analog/digital comparisons ignore the potential errors inherent in analog recording; the comparisons are rarely blind or properly conducted, so your bias emerges.

Here's one to stump you: I have a CD that was burned by Steve Guttenberg (he used to write the occasional "tweak" feature for me when I was senior editor of Audio magazine in New York; now he's a reviewer for Cnet.com and blogger for the latter).

Anyway, he burned a CD for me of the analog output of his ultra-tweak turntable/cartridge/preamp combo. I have some of the same vinyl albums he recorded on the CD. When you sync up the CD of Steve's analog gear to playback of the same tracks directly played from my analog turntable (Shure V15 Type V cartridge and dedicated separate preamp), the CD playback of the vinyl tracks Steve recorded is indistinguishable from the direct vinyl playback. The insertion of the A/D and D/A converters in the digital recording chain adds nothing: no "hard" quality, no degradation whatsoever. It's a straight wire reproduction.

In closing, recording engineers and producers are just as susceptible to psychological bias as the rest of us, unless the comparisons are blind and immediate. Lots of engineers have been convinced by the huckster/promotional skills of Monster Cable and had their studios re-wired. Absurd!

I'm not trying to destroy your enjoyment (or anyone else's) of vinyl playback. If you like it, or prefer it, great. But it ain't better! Technically, it's horse-and-buggy technology compared to digital recording, yet it can work really well (if you can ignore the pitch variations, distortion on inner tracks, compressed dynamics, etc.).

Cheers,
Alan

I was going to ask if this had been done. Thanks, Alan.

Hi,
Interesting ! Technical facts about Vinyl support . . .

Engineering for Vinyl

My current HT can't accommodate my Pioneer but I'm sure things are going to change soon and I'll have this unit supported.

very nice!

If the object is high fidelity, a relatively crude format such as the LP can't match a digital format such as the CD. As long as there are at least two digital samples available at each frequency(which minimum can be the case around 20KHz)the analog waveform is reproduced exactly, since two points mathematically define the sine wave which makes up a frequency in all music. A stylus vibrating in the groove of a record can come close, but is inherently less accurate.

still it is a very pretty turntable.

Yeah. That would look nice pictured next to some glowing vacuum tubes.

If they make vacuum tubes that glow blue, I'm in!

that would not make for "warm" tonalities, they would be cold and clinical.

Well, that'll make EVERYONE happy, then!

my two amps have fans in them; a long time ago i cut the electrical wires to the fans so the amps would give me warmer sound.

today, i could sell those amps for quadruple the price!

http://www.decware.com/newsite/minitoriise.htm

Scroll down about halfway.

That is a really nice amp. They even recommend the Audez'e LCD-2 Planar Magnetic headphones for the HP amp section mod. I bet that is a match made in heaven.

The Audeze LCD-2 is THE headphone I really want to listen to some day.

Enjoyable thread this.

I have an ancient Rega Planar 3 with the cool glass platter, but not the SME arm. It's one of the original Rega arms and not very good.

I think Vinyl can sound great, but Alan is right - CD is just more accurate. Vinyl, and valve amps for that matter, can have a warm sound that is quite relaxing, and if you like it that's fine. The only problem I find with CDs or other digital sources is that the clean extended top end can emphasise deficiencies in speakers, room acoustics or in original analogue recordings.

My turntable is only used these days to transcribe my record collection to FLAC files for playback via my Logitech Squeezbox.

I also agree with Ian about the nostalgia and aesthetic value of an LP

No Murph, tubes emitting blue light are probably bathing you with X-Rays.

However, a wash of electrons boiling off of one plate and rolling through the vacuum to the other sure make some music magic.

I have a Music Hall mmf-5.1 with an upgrade Goldring 2400 cartridge.

My dad has a Harman Kardon Award Festival tube amp monster, F50XK HK tube tuner, Garrard 301 turntable system sitting in storage. I have to get back east and have them boxed and shipped.

First, your hair falls out in clumps. It gets worse from there.

Picturing myself green and hairless brooding over the blue tubes. "My Precioussssss!"

A friend of mine got one many years back now for this reason and the "cool" factor of being a "true" audiophile, but his collection of vinyl is limited and i haven't seen it increasing at all.
I think he also realizes the limitations of having to go out and physically buy vinyl, then store it somewhere, vs. using his 200 disc cdp or his iPod and not have a block of space taken up on his shelves for the physical media.

In essence, it was a novelty at the time he was purchasing new audio gear, which has now died off even for him.

Blue tubes goooooooooooooood, yessssssss!

Pretty blue tubes.....the aesthetic appeal of an amp is enough to make one "hear" an improvement or difference in sound.

I don't have a turntable. I do have a (one) vinyl album that has not ever made it to CD. What is the best way to get a "rip" of the album to digital?

I googled for vinyl ripping services and there are a few out there. Does anyone have any experiences with this?

I am looking for a very good "audiophile" quality transfer to digital.

Henry, I could do that for you. PM me.

Close your eyes.

But how would tell if it was bright or not?

By the heat radiating off the tubes.

Thanks Mark, check your inbox.

Hey Mark,
What programs / process are you using. I've been preparing (err procrastinating) for a while now in ripping some of Sharon's old vinyl. For the longest time, I did not have a turntable to use but over Christmas, my Parents luckily (err I mean sigh, now I have to get busy) lent us theirs.

Which leads me to my questions which I think suit this thread. Here is the situation in point form.

The Turntable is labeled as follows.
Technics DC Servo Automatic Turntable System SL-BD27.
Some research tells me it was fitted with a Panasonic P-24 P24 phono cartridge and a Panasonic Technics EPS-24CS EPS24CS needle stylus.

My Denon 3806 has phono inputs but I'm 'somewhat sure' that it has no preamp. I will have to dig one of those up.

Goal is digitizing music for nostalgic reasons just so it's not totally lost. We are not shooting for serious listening qualty and neither are we concerned about making audiophile reproductions.

My Questions.
1. Advice on obtaining a budget pre-amp. (This was previously hooked to a larger Technics, component stereo system that was too big to conveniently borrow, plus it would leave them without music for the duration.)

2. The cartridge is the original and hasn't been used in years. How can I determine if it should be replaced. Again, we are not looking for audiophile reproductions but if a small investment = greatly improved results, we would try it.

I haven't listened to vinyl since I was a kid so I'm not sure if I could identify a poor or worn out cartridge since the source material is not going to pristine to begin with.

Hi Murph,

First, if your Denon has "phono inputs," then it already has a built-in phono preamp. No outboard phono preamp will be required.

I doubt you have access to a stylus inspection microscope--formerly, elaborate audio retail stores had these on site--so it's impossible for you to determine how worn the stylus is on the Panasonic phono cartridge. Since the latter were mediocre, I'd suggest replacing the cartridge with something from Shure or Grado. Both US brands still make the most linear and high-quality cartridges at affordable prices. Check out the Shure M97HE or a Grado model under $100. Stanton is also an excellent US-made cartridge brand. The Shure cartridges have the advantage of a damped stylus brush that rides on the vinyl ahead of the stylus and reduces the effects of tonearm/record-warp interactions.

Regards,
Alan

Thanks Alan, the money saved in not having to buy a preamp will take away the guilt in buying a new cartridge on spec.

Murph,

I just checked online; here's a link to a Grado cartridge (or a Shure) that would be appropriate for the tonearm of the turntable you're using. (There are likely online sources in Canada that will carry the same models.)

http://www.needledoctor.com/Grado-Black1-Prestige-Series-Phono-Cartridges?sc=2&category=374

The Shure model I mentioned to you is now called the Shure M97XE, and has the silicone-damped stabilizer brush (highly useful for warped record playback). It's also on the needle doctor site.

These cartridges are offered in "P-mount" or "Standard-mount" versions. The P-mount type is plug-in design, a system that Panasonic and Technics embraced for a time. The cartridge plugs directly into the end of the tonearm, rather than being installed with tiny screws into a tonearm headshell. So check the turntable tonearm to see if it has a separate, detachable headshell or uses the P-mount plug-in cartridge type.

Note also that Grado's term "moving iron--MI" is a moving-magnet design like the Shure. For the tonearm quality you'll be using, get a moving-magnet cartridge. Moving-coil (MC) cartridges usually have much lower output and require an additional stage of pre-amplification which I doubt your Denon receiver has. In any case, MC cartridges are more susceptible to hum pickup and noise. They also have no inherent superiority to moving-magnet types.

If a tracking-force range is recommended, always use the highest tracking force in the range. With the models I suggested, that would be 1.5 grams. Using a lower tracking force may result in "mistracking" on highly modulated (loud) grooves, which will literally carve distortion permanently into the vinyl groove.

Alan

truly a wise man... :-)

Thanks, J.B. I've just been around for SO LONG. . .ha, ha, and have absorbed all the vinyl lore that's fit to print.

Cheers,
Alan

some years before and for a long time after i bought my audio system in the mid 80's, i read many u.s. and canadian audio and then audio-video magazines, many times learning from your writings. :-)

Thanks Alan, You ROCK! That is extremely useful information.
Thanks for taking the time to look around for me as well.