If you go to a store these days and ask for a record player the youngster waiting on you is likely to show you the cd players. Some of us are old enough, uhhh, make that mature enough, to remember those big black flat disks with grooves on them. You put one of those on a record player, or better yet, a turntable connected to a sound system and it produced amazing sounds. Now don't get me wrong, I like the clean sound that digitalized music produces. But there is something satisfying about putting a record on a turntable, aiming the tone arm at it and watching the stylus float gently down on black vinyl. Soon deep, rich music that stirs the soul comes out of speakers, scratches and all.
It's been a while since I spun vinyl, my old turntable was more than 35 years old and I had retired it some time ago. In recent years however, there has been a resurgence in vinyl as a new generation is discovering what I had once taken for granted.
I received an Amazon gift certificate for Christmas and was thinking about what to get with it. I wanted it to be something special, I didn't want to use for the ordinary day to day things. So I thought about the turntable, I have a number of old records. While much of it is available in digital format, there are some things that are not. So I thought a new turntable would be nice to have. I looked on Amazon and found a decent selection, not like it was when I was a younger man, but there are some worthwhile machines being made today.
This is what I got,
I'm rocking out to Zepplin and feeling like a hippie again