looking for a turntable...help!

ok,
i'm looking to dust off some of the old vinyl along with purchasing some new stuff as well. i need to pick up a turntable however and could use some direction/advice.

looking to stay under $300.00 if possible and will also need an amp as my receiver does not have phono inputs.

i'm looking for specific brands and model numbers if possible. i'm not opposed to new or used/vintage or belt-drive or direct-drive, i just want to get something half way decent.

any help is appreciated as well as any advice!

d a v e

Good question and I would like to know as well. I think this will be my next direction also. Seems like some of the other posts I've seen in the past couple years mentioned that some decent turntables can be had quite reasonable. I think "skies the limit" for the cartridge tho. I don't know how many disc jockeys we have on the Ascend Forum.

Randy

I have a good friend who is into vintage audio equipment. I'll ask him tomorrow when I see him at work & see if he has any ideas. I know that he frequents the forums on AudioKarma (www.audiokarma.org) and the members often have stuff for sale. From what I've heard though, it's very easy to damage a turntable in shipping, unless a lot of care has been placed into packaging it. I'll report back when I have some more info.

You can keep an eye out for used Musichall, Rega or Project turntables on AudioGon. I picked up a used Rega P2 there a couple of years ago.

I have a Project PhonoBox pre-amp to sell once I get it back from a friend who is borrowing it. You can also get a basic inexpensive pre-amp at RadioShack for under $50 IIRC.

This won't help you much, but in Austin, Quinn and I heard a high end system with a turntable....the GREAT sound coming from vinyl in that system really surprised me.

I think the turntable was $2k-$3k.

Ok...here's what my friend had to say:

"New - the Music Hall 2.1 is supposed to be the best entry-level table to
get. I wish I had one.

Used - might be able to get a Music Hall 5. Plenty of other options out
there, including Dual, Thorens, Denon, and the higher end Pioneer,
Technics, Kenwood, and Sony tables. Obviously, they are everywhere on eBay
and Audiogon. As I was saying the other day, the most important thing is
to buy from a seller who knows how to pack a turntable. A huge percentage
of them are destroyed in shipping.

There is a guy on Audiokarma (Grumpy) who has had a Micro Seiki turntable
for sale on his website for a long time. It's a nice table, I think he
wants $150 + shipping for it. That would be a good buy from good seller."

You might want to do some Googling of these various TTs. Here's another thread I found through Google with TT recs:

http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/1/30960.html

HTHs some!