Haven't played my LP's in 20 years - still good?

Thanx for the hopefull feedback. I had a rule for years that I wouldn't buy a Cd if I owned the LP. Like all my Rules, I bent the heck outta it, but still have about 400 or so that I don't own on CD. Mostly progressive rock, fusion stuff, a few half speed masters. Been having a hankering for some Stanley Clarke fusion stuff, I have most of his lp's. Figure to spend about $1500 on Turntable, phono stage and nittygritty type cleaner. But like all my rules that $1500 might get bent a bit.
Cheers.

Tarsando I wis cd never happened and now mp3's talk about quality going dow hill over the years....

A little over a year ago, I was in the same position as you. Upon playing, I found my albums purchased in the 60's, 70's and early 80's were in the same condition as I left them.

Of course like folks have suggested, nothing has hit my tt without a good VPI 16.5 cleaning.

In hindsight, I should never have stopped playing vinyl! In the period of time I've had my tt, I can count on one hand, the number of CD's that I've critically listened to. Vinyl is just so much more enjoyable than digital, and I'm comparing apples to apples in terms of CDP and tt, tonearm quality/cost.

For the first few days of lp playing, I was astonished that the highly resolved, harmonically rich music I was hearing was emanating from my new mechanical/analog playback device!

I’m not sure if you've thought about your budget for a cartridge, but if you're in the $200-300 range, you can't go wrong with a Denon 103R.

Also, as soon as you clean them good I always replace the inner sleeve with a high quality rice paper sleeve. This way when you remove them after long storage, the static electricity discharge is greatly reduced. No stick with vinyl, the older, the further you get away from ' stereophonic ' recordings and into that high fidelity unbreakable, micro- deepgroove heavy thick plates of vinyl, the better the sound.
Enjoy

Richmon,

for the price range you mentioned I would suggest looking at the used market. You can get better bang for the buck that way. If your handy, you can build your own RCM that will work every bit as well as a VPI 16.5 for cleaning. There have been many threads here by people in your situation so search the archives and you'll get lots of ideas.

I'm so good at breaking my own rules. Just my way of stickin' it to The Man.

Good luck and welcome to the nut house.

Dan