Back to basics


With children educated, married, etc. ... I want to return to vinyl. Having thousands of excellent graded lp's not played in years, I'm looking to purchase a good 'starter' turntable, that is something not from Best Buy so to speak.

Where do I start? As a retiree the budget is somewhat limited. What can I expect with a purchase? With/without cartridge, base, arm etc...

Thanks. Richard
earthquake
The new Well Tempered "Amadeus Mk-II" looks really interesting $2850.00
(see August Stereophile).
Richard, You haven't really given us a budget to hit. Without that and your current system, it's hard to work.

That said, I've always thought the VPI HW-19 III an underrated table. Teamed up with a nice Jelco-based arm and "better" Audio Technica cartridge (system dependent), it can be a very good performer.
The budget is the main consideration. The suggested Rega or Project turntables come completely set up with cartridge for 3 to 5 Hundred dollars and are excellent
Alan
Islandmandan is right. Don´t waste your time & money on suspended decks (maybe except Oracle but it´s quite difficult to finetune). I wasted nearly thirty years with floating decks (lol).
Worth trying is a vintage Japanese direct drive but not the cheapest models Denon, JVC, Luxman, Technics, SONY etc (off eBay). Place the table on spikes and a heavy platform like stone.
For cartridge very compliant SHURE, Stanton, Audio-Technica but not the cheapest models. Try to find NOS AT-160 ML cartridge. The SME III is the perfect match to high compliant cartridges.

Best of Luck !
Depends on budget -but probably can't go wrong with a VPI Traveler and Ortofon 2Mred cartridge.