Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[kevin2306]

So, totally non related to motoring.
I've decided I want to get back to playing vinyl instead of my iPod.
Anyone got any tips about makes, any secret makes out there that are great quality but not paying a premium for the name?
I want a pair of floor mounted speakers, amp and turntable.

Kev

[ukdave2002]

Hi Kev

I used to be into all this stuff years ago, but have succumb to the convenience of digital

Years ago a lot of folk made the mistake of selecting a fantastic amp with mediocre speakers; speakers often got selected with far too much weighting on the cosmetic look and fit rather than acoustics. You need to avoid amps that have digital processing (most do these days) a simple class A amp will give the purest sound, but they are inefficient and tend to be pricy as the output is a single transitor or valve and has to be working all the time, class B amps effectivly switch the transitor off 50% of the time, the output can be split so that 2 transistors work together in a push pull arangment, these are more efficient but introduce some distortion when the output "crosses" over from one transitor to the other; when we used to repair these in the event of a output transistor fail, we used to replace both transistors as a "matched pair" to minimise any distortion.The most common comprimise in mid quality amps are class AB, they effectivly work as a class A at lower levels and class B at higer levels.

When you go to purchase the amp, if the shop doesn't understand about amplifier classes walk out as, in ignorance they will probably try to sell you an amp that processes the sound, exactly what you are trying to avoid.

Speakers are more to generalise about, years ago to get a decent bass the speaker had to have a large diameter cone, these days smaller cones that have a greater movement have gained popularity, are IMHO a bit of a compromise, however your wife may not appriciate massive speakers in the living room!

The position of the speakers and type of furnishing in a room make a huge difference, purists arrange the furniture around the speakers most of us prefer domestic harmony over audio quality!

Coincidently I have just got rid of our "home theatre " system that consisted of a seperate amp, CD player, 5 speakers (2 quite large) and a sub woofer and replaced it with a sound bar that has a wireless sub woofer, the family can connct iPhones / iPads to the sound bar by Bluetooth, to play their music , my wife's happy as the clutter of speakers has gone!

Dave

PS my experience is probably 25 years out of date! There may well have been analouge amp and speaker developments in the intervening years !!

[petermeachem]

The thing to do I reckon is to buy old English stuff. or at least European. This http://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/ is a good forum and the members are terribly helpful.
I am quite lucky that my stuff was bought in the 70's and 80's by and large and it still works very well. The trouble is that my stuff is now overly expensive Garrard 401, SME 3009, Quad 33/303/FM3, Philipps CD104 and JR149's.
Speakers are relatively easy, there are loads of quality English speakers from that period, Tannoy, Celestion, B&W. Thorens and Rega turntables are good, rega look very stylish. I've just looked them up on ebay and they seem expensive now! I retrieved a Rega from the electrical skip in Chichester tip for my son. Amplifiers are fairly easy so long as it has a disc input for a magnetic cartridge.
Whatever you do don't buy anything new and cheap or any turntable with a usb lead.
Trouble is it is all quite complicated, bit like someone saying I know nothing about cars, which one shall I buy. I'd look on Gumtree or local papers and see what you can find, so long as the turntable is reasonable you can sort the rest out if you aren't happy with it, at least you will have something to listen to.
I use mine a lot, radio and records and play music from my pc through the tape input. It just sounds much nicer than the unnatural sound of modern compressed digital.
(A record cleaner is handy too!)