New Vinyl Setup

Dan_ed, thanks for the suggestions. I have read other good comments about the Basis 1400. It looks very basic...no pun intended. What makes this table better than others at the price point?

Kthomas,

You're absolutely right about the large number of variables involved in a vinyl setup. Unfortunately, these days even if you buy new and pay a dealer for the initial setup there's no guarantee it will be done right. The audio industry mainstream abandoned vinyl twenty years ago. A whole generation that might have learned how to do it right was lost, and the people who used to know are few and getting fewer. There's just not enough business to earn a living at it, but some dealers who no longer understand what they're doing may still take your money. (Of course others will do a good job. The problem is knowing which job you got. For that you need the DIY knowledge you could have begun acquiring from the get-go, for free.)

Having one or more things wrong in a newbie setup is likely enough. I've certainly been there, done that. But learning and hearing what various adjustments do and how to optimize them is a vital part of the experience. It makes you smarter.

From the thoughtful and foresighted nature of your question, I'm guessing you have the interest and intelligence to learn by reading, asking and trying. You already understand that vinyl is not plug and play, no matter what anyone's ad copy claims. That's a critical first step that some people never take. They throw thousands of dollars at very costly rigs, which never play up to their potential for lack of careful adjustment by the owner.

Try viewing the last half of Michael Fremer's vinyl setup DVD. (The first half is a waste of time, unless you'd enjoy a rambling tour of his record collection.) For a few bucks it will teach you how to do a reasonably good setup with no obvious or major errors. Resources like this board and the FAQ's on VA will also help. You'll be free to invest all your audio budget in better equipment and more music.

Doug

I'm sure there are other tables in the same range as the 1400 that are very good. I offer it because that is one, along with a Basis 2100 and 2500, that I've spent some time with. The 2100 used a Vector arm and latter I used that same Vector and a Graham 2.2 on the 2500. I had purchased the 1400 used here in the ads to use until my Gavia was delivered, say about 10 months altogether. (Not that the Gavia took that long, but I sold the 2500 to help the funding issue.) Even though I knew the quality and performance of Basis products I was very pleasantly surprised with the 1400. That table had a modified RB300. The 1400's usually go for $800-$1000 used. If you compare that to the cost of say a new MMF-7 (not picking on Music Hall here, but I owned one of those as well for a while) then there is so much more offered from the Basis. Better bearing, motor, etc. I suspect that VPI, SME, etc would also have models that would do well.

Doug makes a great point. The only real sin is to buy high-end and never take the time to learn how to improve the setup.

Tvad,

I wish I had some good suggestions to add to Dan's, but we followed his "don't buy too cheap" plan several years ago, with a vengeance. ;-)

We went directly from a 25-year-old mid-fi rig that had been collecting dust for years to a Teres 265/OL Silver/Shelter 901 ($5K-ish). No baby steps!

That mad, Kierkegaardian leap of faith was richly inspired by Twl, to whom we will be forever grateful, and of course it worked out well for us. Given the price structure of Teres I could have sold that rig off without losing more than $1K or so if we'd decided the whole vinyl thing wasn't for us.

That didn't happen of course. As you know, we've since gone the other way, from boldness to lunacy and beyond.

Doug

P.S. It is indeed easy to make mistakes when getting into vinyl, but IMO the serious mistakes are more likely to be poor equipment selection or poor equipment matching than poor setup and adjustment. The latter is easily rectified after all. The former can really mess with your head, cause you to chase the wrong "fixes" and cost alot of unnecessary money. IOW, Tvad's question is a very important one and Dan's "don't buy too cheap" is a good start toward success.

Doug, I must give credit to TWL as well. He once gave out this advice about buying higher up the first time. Unfortunately for me it was well into my 'table journey. But looking back I can really appreciate now what he was saying.