Crosley should be arrested for selling junk


Just got a handful of records from a woman that sound incredible except they are destroyed by a junk Crosley her family bought her. (Inc. Decca Sammy Davis Jr. Porgy and Bess, Capitol Frank Sinatra etc.)

128x128noromance
If the records are years old how can it be known if it was this turntable that damaged them?
Mapman is off base.   The USA makes some tip top
TT's.  Sure you can buy $100.00 tables.  In the state's.   Like this guy has
With the dime taped on the tonearm. 
Rgt
Two things MattMiller said that really stands out and I agree with.

One, although there are nice modern sounding pressings, in some cases  I find early and original pressings to possess a depth or life to them that some reproductions are lacking. Sorry if that sounds a little to vague or metaphoric, I couldn't articulate at the moment.

Two, I know funds can be tight for some folks, ( they are for me at present) but in the past and in general it seems more people were willing to save and expected to pay more for quality. The patience was there. When I first got what I considered an upgrade turntable at about age 12 in 1982, it was a Technics with an Audio Technica cartridge that cost my parents around $250 to $300. Do the inflation math.

Happy holidays
Merry Christmas
JP:)


Oh no, not at all. Good LP playback requires a proper turntable, and a proper pickup arm, and a proper phono cartridge, and a proper phono preamp. They must each be suited to the others, and they must all be properly setup.

And one more thing - a decent record cleaning machine. Almost no one back in the day of vinyl actually owned one, so most/many LPs are gunked up and will have lots of tics and pops but they cam clean up amazingly well and play with silent backgrounds if cleaned properly.

I find that classical are always pretty clean - perhaps payed fewer times?  But OTOH, I bought quite a few LPs from the library of a defunct classical station that must have played them many times, probably on indifferent equipment and they had pretty clean, quiet sides.

Rock records can be really bad - I've seen heavy metal stuff that looked like it had been used as the bottom of a hamster wheel, by a hamster in logging boots, and I have also seen LPs with unknown substances melted onto the surfaces....and one where the owner had scratched his initials into one side, no doubt while under the influence of something, presumably so no one would take his record!
Don't know where do you dig for the records, on fleamarkets? 
Every good seller (online) has grading systrem and customers feedbacks, no one is trying to sell VG- copy like M- Some sellers are extremely accurate with the grading, most of the top sellers use vacuum cleaning machines and every records is already cleaned. So your horror story is something special.