As for a record center weight/clamp that is an excellent idea. Don’t pay a rediculous price get it here.
My current setup is under $500 and I am very pleased with it. I inherited a Thorens TD 165 which I cleaned up. I upgraded the cartridge to an Ortofon 2m Red for $100 which I like a lot. It is very detailed with slight warmth. I purchased a Schiit Mani and Schiit Vali for $278 which pairs very nicely with the warmth of the Ortofon. I have been tube rolling with the Vali and it is always rewarding when you get the right combination. I use these with the Sennheiser HD 650’s which are very neutral. I like a more warm sound signature so the Vali tube amp and Ortofon cartridge make the music a bit more lively and fun.
All in all I spent $378, but If you need to find a turntable as well, you might be better off getting one with a preamp, and Ortofon 2m Red pre installed. The Uturn custom can be spec’ed for that and it comes in at $324. Add the Vali and that is your budget at $500.
Below is a picture of my current setup, though I did take the Schiit Asgard amp which is pictured for my digital setup at my desk and replaced it with the Vali.
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That Muddy Waters albums is great…one of my favorites! My Dad used to listen to it a lot…good memories
I love it as well. Love testing out new headphones with it in order to test sound stage, because this record is BIG.
I’ll be setting this up tonight…if I can…threw my lower back out doing deadlifts this morning…sigh time for some more tigersbalm…I’ll post more pics soon.
This is my stop gap turntable while I polish up and baby a AR player. Looking forward to needle dropping on both =)
So naked!
Platterpus
Needled
Covered
@Torq, I’m going to need a better phono preamp…lol but this will be a fun stop gap…maybe…
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okay, now I"m getting jealous. Still have my album collection from college but the turntable has long since faded into pleasant memories. Might be time to walk that path again. Damn it
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I can’t find my old felt pads… I think they are in the garage in a box somewhere…to the internet for some cork pads!
Also, this is the secondary record player while I get my primary one, I received earlier this year.
I’m looking forward to enjoying some records.
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It’s alive!!!
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Very nice and yet another rabbit hole to lose yourself in.
. Good luck and happy listening. The above picture is very nice indeed.
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Excellent! Congrats!
Now the important question … how are you liking the sound?!
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Rather enjoyable, I’ve only got half a couple songs in…you were correct in your statement about the preamp, pretty noisy. But outside of that, very good noises coming from it lol.
@prfallon69 yes I already have a Vinyl itch lol most of the vinyl I order is niche stuff though. I probably will start looking for records that I can enjoy all the way through from here forward (along with some niche stuff still lol)
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Yeah, there’s so much gain required in a phono-preamp that inexpensive tube-preamps usually wind up being quite audibly noisy. And then there are the exposed tubes, which don’t really help matters. Even things like the $400-ish Pro-Ject Tube Box DS aren’t ideal for noise-levels, though that one does bury the active parts of the tube inside the casework.
And then, of course, you want/need the quietest tubes you can find, and suddenly things start adding up fast …
Absent some kit-based stuff (like the Bottlehead Eros 2 and Reduction), I’ve generally found I don’t get on with tube-based phono stages until we’re at the level of things like the EAR 834 (which is excellent). That’s just me, and others may think differently about it, but I tend to go solid-state for my phono-stage and let the amplification be the “tube” part of things.
The current Schiit Mani is a solid, and very configurable, little option that I think will surprise you in comparison. There are other options for those that want to fiddle around with PSU modifications and so on that perform similarly for less.
There are other intriguing options, though they can start to get a bit out of whack in terms of where it is most effective to allocate one’s budget.
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I’m looking forward to seeing how the Mani sounds!
That amp I’m using, everyone says just buy the bought together tubes on Amazon and not to bother with the stock ones lol.
Once I get settled I’ll look into doing a review/impression of the Fluance RT85.
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Just wanted to say I set up the same turntable last night down here outside of New Orleans. And as soon as I find it (I just moved) I’ll be putting a Schiit on the front end. Amazing. My “to play with” turntable is a Thorens TD-165 that had the audio cables cut sometime during the move. Thanks big brother. (He just turned 70 so I can cut him some slack.) The trick is to find someone in a place I haven’t lived in 45 years that I trust with a soldering iron and my baby. At least there is no rush now…
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There is a felt pad with the AR that you can use. Nice player. I hope you will be equally happy (or happier) with the AR. It will be a good comparison of the design tradoffs.
Your AR, like some Thorens, and a few others use a sprung suspension for isolation. Most modern tables simply go for weight. The tone arm on your new table will almost certainly be easier to use, but will probably have higher resonances.
The Shure V-15 type III (Improved) cartridge on your AR is a classic for good reason, and after a period in which quality carts’ prices skyrocketed because of small demand, there are now a number of good mainstream carts on the market that will outperform it. My new turntable uses an Ortofon 2M Bronze, which is, to my ears, a bit better.* Any major brand in the $450+ price range would likely be the same.
- I don’t like vague unsubstantiated assertions any more than the rest of you. But the only other cart I’d listened to on the AR was a vintage Stanton 600EE. I’ve used the Ortofon 2M with the same electronics as the Shure V-15 III, but in the tone arm of a VPI Prime Scout. I hear better tracking of very loud passages, more clarity on high-hats, and what I perceive as a better soundstage (more cleanly separated channels). However, I can’t state that it is cart or tone arm. I’m pretty sure the last is cartridge. The Shure has always had a very solid, robust sound that is pleasing on chamber and classical music. It has also been a winner with well recorded electric bass.
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I’m looking forward to having the AR in the living room area to run to some speakers (still deciding on those). I didn’t even think to grab the felt from the AR! I’ll remedy that when I get home…
This player will be my headphones/JBL 305 speaker desk setup for a more personal affair, in my corner of the house 
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Reviving and old thread, anybody see this email today?
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Thank you @Torq my brain must not have had enough coffee this morning and I missed this thread!!
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Regarding 78 RPM.
If you are primarily looking to play LPs and maybe a 45, DON’T make an issue of 78 RPM.
I was recently going through some 78 albums. Yes, this is where we get the term record album. There are several 78s in a binder, just like a photo album. . . . Anyway looking at them and trying to figure out how to play and/or digitize them.
Many record changers from the 50s through 70s have the ability to play a 78. Not well. A very few have a cartridge/stylus that flips around and has a 78 setting, just like your car rear view may have a night setting. Changers also have the ability to drop one record on another, give you greater playing time without fuss, at the expense of ruining records with ground-in dirt. Not a favorable trade-off.
There are several records that we think of as 78 RPM, but this wasn’t s solid standard. Real afflictionados (Misspelling on purpose) have turntables just for these that adjust from about 72 to 95 RPM. They also have at least two kinds of styli, if they play both Victrola (RCA style) and Edison (Diamond disk style) records. Plus, they have different pre-amps because equalization curves did not exist or were different than the later RIAA.
Does this sound like a Rabbit Hole? It’s a whole rabbit colony.
However I find looking on Apple Music, Tidal, and Spotify, I’ve been able to find ALREADY DIGITIZED versions that someone who is much happier living with floppy eared creatures than I am has provided for me. A surprising number of discs and artists, and probably from records in better shape than you have available.
Oh yeah, I do have an Edisonola in the attic. It works just fine, crank it up and play the records. Even has an arm for steel needles for RCA Victor records. Playing vintage records on vintage equipment is only somewhat destructive. No headphone jack. No electricity either.
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I’m still of the opinion that most, maybe even the majority, of new-comers to vinyl buy in at the wrong level.
Almost all of them come into it with the wrong expectations.
Most of the romantic notions about vinyl replay tend to evaporate extremely quickly with used gear, or most of the budget stuff out there, leading to extreme disappointment.
I still recommend going very, very basic … with a new, factory-setup table, at first … and if a few months later you’ve amassed enough vinyl and listening time that you know you want to continue, make as big a step up as you can manage.
Unlike DACs, where the differences between a competent $100 model and a $10,000 model can be measured in single-digit percentage points, differences between turntables, arms, cartridges and even phono stages are easily heard and extremely significant.
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