Trying to get in to vinyl, turntable suggestions?

04-20-09: Learsfool
With all due respect to the fans of Technics, I personally would argue that there is a reason they are known as "DJ" tables.

And that reason is simply that they spin up to speed in 1/4 turn and can take a beating night after night. The SL1200 was designed as a home audiophile turntable. It was adopted by the DJ industry because of its reliability and durability, and because its rotational consistency, bass slam, and leading edge transients get people out on the dance floor.

For the money you are talking about, I would suggest buying a new Rega P1 or P2. You will get much better soundstaging and imaging, if these are important to you, as well as better resolution of instrumental and vocal timbres.

Simply not true. Subjectively a person may prefer the Rega, but it won't be on timbral accuracy, let alone rhythm, pace, drive, or leading transients. I just spent two hours Friday with my favorite LPs at my local British hi-fi dealer. I listened to a P2 with Rega Bias cartridge followed by a Roksan Radius 5 fitted with a Roksan-badged variant of the Goldring 1042. The signal chain from there on was all Naim, at least $10K worth.

Upon firing up the P2, at first the imaging impresses, but after two or three more cuts the shortcomings become very obvious. Once the recording got above 8 instruments or voices, it started to congest. The midrange is recessed *and* grainy. This is a $650 rig.

You can mail order an SL1210 M5G with improved tonearm wire for around $454 delivered. Add an Ortofon 2M Blue and you're at the same price range, and this rig will kick the Rega's ass eight ways to Sunday. For very little more money you can swap out the feet for brass cones, put it on a butcher block cutting board, and put Vibrapods or other vibration absorbing feet under the block. At that point the Technics reveals inner detail you won't hear on the P2.

When I tired of the P2, I started spinning on the Roksan instead. This was a big improvement, and at $2700 it ought to be. It resolved the details, the transients and tonal fadeouts far beyond what the Rega could do. But even at that, it sounded murky and sluggish. The midrange was recessed similarly to the P2, but wasn't grainy. This is a parlor trick to create the illusion of greater soundstage depth and ambient air and detail. This Roksan couldn't touch my Technics rig for linear response, bass drive and clarity, midrange transparency, pitch and rhythmical accuracy, and especially, timbral accuracy.

For those in love with the Rega RB300 and variants, it's still cheaper to get an SL1200 ($350, remember?) and then get the Origin Live Technics armboard and an RB300-compatible tonearm. For about $1500, you could have an SL1200 with an Origin Live Silver tonearm with VTA adjustment.

Any debate about Technics versus Rega is a complete waste of bandwidth.

If anyone has any doubts about which is better, then the debate is best settled by purchasing one of each and comparing them side by side in one's system. Half of users will prefer the Technics, and the other half will prefer the Rega.

With such devotion to both brands, it's clear one can be happy with either, especially if one has little or no prior experience with vinyl.

04-20-09: Tvad
Any debate about Technics versus Rega is a complete waste of bandwidth.

Yeah, but I had fun.

Fair enough.

Party on Garth!

Burnsy1, to answer your question, Rega makes several different tables in their line, so yes, there is plenty of room to upgrade in that line. I personally have the one in the middle of the line, the P5. That is their table in the $1500 range, and with their TT-PSU it is indeed one of the very best options in that price range, as Zenblaster says.

As far as comparisons to the Technics, the Technics are indeed built like a tank. They also can sound like one... :) Seriously, I must agree to disagree with Johnny - most of the audiophiles I know personally are also professional musicians (classical and jazz), and all of us who have heard the two tables (I have owned both) have greatly preferred the Regas for their soundstaging and better instrumental and vocal timbre resolution. You hear more of what the original recording space sounded like, and greater variety of color in the tones of the players. The Technics, in my experience, tends to be preferred by people who listen mainly to rock or other types of mostly electronic music - those tables tend to homogenize different recordings rather than bringing out differences, another reason they are preferred by DJs as well. I am not saying there is anything necessarily wrong with this, by the way, different strokes for different folks - many audiophiles prefer to make all of their recordings sound as much the same as they can in their systems. I am not saying the Technics are bad tables by any means - it all depends on what your priorities are, and those tables do what they are designed to do very well. There is plenty of room in this hobby for people of all tastes and preferences. While I will crack a joke here and there, I do try to honestly describe what I hear when posting on this site, whatever the subject may be. Since I am not a very good writer, sometimes my comments are taken much differently than they were meant, and I certainly take my share of the blame for that. As I have said before, I sure am glad a became a musician instead of a writer!