socrates63
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2005
- Posts
- 3,434
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- 12
After much deliberations, changing my mind multiple times within a given day, I finally put an end to my madness and decided to go for a cheap vintage turntable. The idea behind the decision was that I didn't want to invest so much money (I had been looking into $350 to $900 new and used turntables) when I wasn't sure I'd like vinyl.
I decided to spend about $50 and scoured for local sellers on ebay and craigslist for a couple of weeks. Last Friday, I picked up a Pioneer PL-12D from craigslist for $45. I wasn't expecting much, but when I went to pick up the turntable, I was ecstatic. This thing looked fabulous, and the seller was obviously a vintage audio lover who took great care of his equipment. His apartment living room wall was covered with multiple vintage Marantz and Sony receivers, tuners, turntables, and speakers. He put on an album to let me hear the turntable, and it sounded great. He replaced the belt with a new one and recommended that I replace the cartridge with a Grado cart, $30-40 he said.
I followed multiple threads started by several members who were looking to get into vinyl, and Zuerst's threads in particular generated a lot of helpful replies. Reading lini and memepool's posts reminded me of watching Siskel and Ebert talk about movies on TV. I want to thank memepool for answering my PM when I asked about the PL-12D.
I haven't done any critical comparisons but the turntable sounds as good, if not better, than my CDP. I'm very surprised given the fact that this particular model was a budget turntable in its day and I'm using the stock cartridge.
Enough of my babbling... on to the pics
. Thanks for reading and sharing in my newfound joy.
my maxed Rockhopper M³
Singlepower MPX3 Slam SE, excuse the dust
I decided to spend about $50 and scoured for local sellers on ebay and craigslist for a couple of weeks. Last Friday, I picked up a Pioneer PL-12D from craigslist for $45. I wasn't expecting much, but when I went to pick up the turntable, I was ecstatic. This thing looked fabulous, and the seller was obviously a vintage audio lover who took great care of his equipment. His apartment living room wall was covered with multiple vintage Marantz and Sony receivers, tuners, turntables, and speakers. He put on an album to let me hear the turntable, and it sounded great. He replaced the belt with a new one and recommended that I replace the cartridge with a Grado cart, $30-40 he said.
I followed multiple threads started by several members who were looking to get into vinyl, and Zuerst's threads in particular generated a lot of helpful replies. Reading lini and memepool's posts reminded me of watching Siskel and Ebert talk about movies on TV. I want to thank memepool for answering my PM when I asked about the PL-12D.
I haven't done any critical comparisons but the turntable sounds as good, if not better, than my CDP. I'm very surprised given the fact that this particular model was a budget turntable in its day and I'm using the stock cartridge.
Enough of my babbling... on to the pics
my maxed Rockhopper M³
Singlepower MPX3 Slam SE, excuse the dust