would you bother?

late post, but -

At any time there are approximately 150,000 LP's (used and new) for sale on eBay, most of them in pristine condition, and often selling selling for a fraction of the price of a CD. As one example, I recently got a dozen Count Basie LP's from one seller, many appearing unplayed, for $3 each! If you make the investment in even a moderately good playback system, I believe this is the cheapest way to get superb sound.

An LP collection is not a problem. Cheapest software available -- TT and Phono stage, cartridge, Record Cleaning Machine, learning how to set everything up -- so it's not easy but -- would I? Absolutely!!

Do it cheap, forget those guys who are spinning tales of thousands of dollars! For years I was a record collector with a cheap technics into a boombox to play my 2000+ LP's and 1000 7's! Then a friend gave me an old NAD and I dropped major bucks- $100! on a used Dual and loaded a Denon 165 on it. It blew away my Philips CDP (also $100). I was a happy camper till I blew out one of my Mitsubishi ($30 used) speakers listening to the Stooges Funhouse too loud. Man, those were the days. Every record sounded great, CD's were easy to play and life was good. My total investment to play records was about $225 including Discwasher record cleaning kit.

Now I have a modded Oracle ,Benz Ace ,Sonic Frontiers yada yada yada, hi-end power cords yada etc.....but spinning a record on even a cheap rig is still listening to music. And there are still lots of stores out there dumping decent used lp's cheap, and ebay etc on the internet has plenty more. Audioasylum is filled with stories of major Goodwill or estate sale finds. Boxes of records for $10! It's true, you will end up buy more and better equipment, I finally dumped my old manual Nitty Gritty for a VPI auto record cleaner. Next up a new tonearm and cart. But the sounds you hear along the way will inspire you. Analog totally rules.

I've been buying records since the early 70's so when I meet these young pups I play 'em some vinyl and if nothing else, the used shops have sold a few Dual or Thoren's decks thanks to me. Plus there's lots of stuff that you can't get on CD. And forgot that tired old line about cleaning your records. Sure it's great if you want, but I know plenty of guys with nothing but a Discwasher brush and fluid and some Bounty paper towels and they have more records than most audio-fillets I know. And when I'm listening to records at their house all I'm hearing is music. Unless you really beat up your records they'll sound fine. In fact most audio-fools that I know listen to utter dreck of highly well recorded crap to show off their systems. One more guy tells me to "listen to the bass sound on this Tom Petty track" and I'm gonna puke!

So pump up the vinyl and let 'er spin!

Only if you want to hear what CD's should sound like.

I tend to just skip all vinyl threads.