Help educate Analogue rookie

Absence of ticks and pops is what sold the majority of folks on CD in the first place, I was there watching the whole world jump on the great Perfect Sound Forever bandwagon. "Damn the music, give me blessed silence!" the crowd cried, and the music was damned. If you love music and music reproduction, then you owe it to yourself to try good'ol analogue to see what all the fuss is about. A rock being physically dragged through a groove will never be as quiet as a laser-beam recording dots and dashes, but it will be a helluva lot more satisfying. I have a record-cleaning machine and rarely use it (also rarely use my CD player), I get by just fine with my walnut-handled Discwasher brush, used dry, no pain or rituals. I use the following procedure when buying used LPs: I pull them out of their sleeve and look at them in the light. If they look cruddy and scratched, or either of these, then I don't buy them. If they look pristine, into my shopping cart they go. I also don't buy on ebay. And there's lots of new vinyl these days, something of a renaissance in fact: safe to buy this on the 'Net. Loose tonearm bearings emphasize surface noise, but in your budget range this shouldn't be a problem. Bright electronics also emphasize surface noise, so avoid tinny phono stages. If you aren't actually looking for problems - i.e. actually listening for the noise rather than the music - then the noise, what there is of it, won't bother you. And if you decide you love the sound of vinyl, then it will bother you less and less. Finally, there are some rigs/systems in which noise is all but inaudible, and with a record in good condition I often wonder if I forgot to lower the tonearm, before the music starts. It'll probably take a while of hit and miss before you assemble such a rig/system, and by that time you may no longer care. Give it a go, life is about experience!

In fact, in my area, there is truly an explosion of new vinyl - two large shops dedicated to new vinyl with small used sections, three CD stores with vinyl sections that double in size every few months now (a shop which dedicated itself to CD years ago now has gone from one lonely row one year ago to eight at last count), all offering classic re-issues of Hendrix etc. to new pop/rock, techno/DJ, garage and re-issue jazz, and all at reasonable prices overall too. I'm not sure how you would track these down David, but I'd say it's time to start some Googling. As to used, there are many shops which specialize in used vinyl in excellent condition, at an average price of $6 a pop, including jazz and blues! Then there are the Neighbourhood Services/Salvation Army type places where LPs are usually not in good condition, but even here classical is usually in good shape, classical music lovers taking better care of their LPs overall; and since rock/pop albums are extremely common, good examples do exist in these shops, though harder to find among all the trash. My own collection is still in boxes in storage waiting for a better home, but in the meantime in close to two years I have amassed close to 400 records from good to excellent shape, of very good music, including rock/pop, classical, old classics/movie soundtracks, jazz and blues. And probably at an average price of $2 a pop. Only a very few of these required cleaning by a machine, my trusty Discwasher brush doing most of the duties used dry, a couple of seconds at most before I drop the needle in the groove. Now I am working on compiling a collection of new rock/pop and classics, having discovered a few very worthwhile new bands on vinyl, including two of my recent favourites/discoveries, Big Boss Man and The Notwist! There IS life after vinyl, and it's on the way up! The Notwist in particular (Neon Golden) is a superb recording and a superb pressing on superbly incredible vinyl, I'm off to buy the entire collection on vinyl tomorrow!

Finaly, I've had a bug up my *ss lately. It kills me to see people who are starting with no knowledge smack-dab in the middle of the High End with a VPI Scout (for instance), who have no idea what to listen for, no idea whether their rig sounds good or not or is properly matched/set-up, and so often announce their disillusionment due to their lack of development/skills/discrimination. It also kills me to see people being advised to start at this level, very common in this forum. Sound reproduction is too complex to simply throw money at it and decide "I want something really good and by-pass the lower rungs," or to be advised to do so. How many out there can properly set-up a cartridge, the least and most fundamental of jobs, don't even talk about suspensions and outboard motors? What happened to starting with a reasonably-priced simple turntable at a few hundred? Here's a lesson for newbies who grew up in sterile and disatisfying digital environments (even if they didn't know it, they NEED hands-on involvement, the reason for hobbies and gardening): Even in the heyday of vinyl when we ALL had record players and CD did not exist, everyone I ever knew started with something like a Rega or Revolver turntable at a few hundred when we first graduated from a mass-produced pieces of crap and discovered there was such a thing as sound quality, and we had all spent our entire lives spinning vinyl! And we STILL made several mistakes! Better to start with the "first" serious turntable, have to start the learning curve somewhere, and here the Regas (and Technics SL1200) are excellent, as they are simple, reliable, and musical with long histories to support them, and of high quality. So, for the novice, Rega turntables are extremely easy to set up, no tricksy outboard motors and VTA matters to worry about, no complicated suspensions and set-up, hit the button and they spin (no need to shove the platter), and are very good and very elegant, the P3, due to its tonearm, good enough for some quite good MCs to boot. As you go up the ladder of cost, so too do complexities, better to start in Simpleville. The Gram Slee Amp2SE is an excellent phono preamp despite its low cost (I was very impressed, and its most obvious attribute is musicality!), and match a HO Benz ACE phono cartridge or Denon DL-160, high-output MCs which should sound fabulous on the Rega RB300 tonearm and via the Gram. After falling in love with the sound of vinyl and getting used to the mechanics and the various issues of sound quality, and learning where our tastes lie before spending several thousand rather than after, THEN we are in a good position to start considering more complex/expensive turntables and tonearms to suit our now-formed tastes and knowledge, and so in the long run save money and enjoy ourselves while learning, rather than lose money and experience frustrations by simply taking an expensive shot in the dark. And the Regas have very high re-sale value to boot, so the cost of an education is very low for the knowledge gained, both in terms of cash and in terms of effort. Now I'm off to the record store, which is exactly next to the other new-vinyl shop, which is exactly next to one of the good used vinyl shop (one-two-three!), to pick up those The Notwist albums, yippee!