Ready to try vinyl

While pshcyicanimal is right in saying tha tyou don't have to spend around 2,000 to have a nice turntable, I disagree with his following comment:

"You must not go the belt drive route or you'll waste a LOT of money and end up with frustration"

Don't you love it when people make HUGE declarations and then don't elaborate. First off, what is this amazing 900 direct drive table you have, and what have you compared it to in the multithoushand dollar category. Secondly, what, juding by _your experience_ is such a waste about using a belt drive system. What exactly is the frustration?

Hopefully others will weigh in, but I think you'd be hard pressed to prove Psychicanimal's reckless assertion that belt drive is the lesser drive technology. This guy must be a DJ, my suggestion would be ignore him unless he substantiates some of his, in my opinion, false claims

Ahh, yeah, NEED CLEANING machine, #1 on the list, it will be huge improvement even on that 60 dollar Plastic sony table with P-mount on Ebay.. But anyway... A good cleaner, Highly suggest the VPI 16.5, will make any table sound like its high end in the comparison to not cleaning the albums, trust me I was not a believer and had a credit at a store with nothing else to buy so I got one and I WAS mad at myself, cause now its my favorite component. Also a GOOD 500-700 used table is pretty nice and a good 200.00 cartridge like Ortofon or Shure at a nice discount online for under 100.00 will definatly be keepers... but then I say skip everything in between, cause then you need to drop 2500.00 plus to really kick it up a notch. from what I have heard anyway...

Nick's response was more along the lines of "if you must have a mechanical record cleaner then the clearaudio works the best"....and then he proceeded to advise me the Last Record solution is the way to go.

all things being equal I would prefer direct drive, too. Problem is that true high end direct drive decks are no longer offered by anybody. The cost of designing and tooling for such a product is prohibitive given the level of sales. I do see that Brinkmann is introducing a direct drive high end turntable; will be interesting to see how it goes.

Belt drives are the most popular and marketed due to their simplicity. The motor is sourced from some company and then really all you have to worry about is the AC control and a bearing. A direct drive is a very complicated and sophisticated product.

Mimberman,
Psychicanimal might be on to something here. Perhaps Linn Sondek, VPI, Galibier, Teres, Amazon, Nottingham, Forsell, Rockport, Walker, Oracle, Sota, Origin, Verdier, Audiomeca, Thorens, Clearaudio, Rega, Kuzma, Michell, Roksan, and Wilson Benesch have it all wrong. Whoda thunk it?
:-)