Two turntables and a... thought experiment

I think realistically I'd take the turntable as I sort of have nearly all the records I want. But I am being tortured by the thought of the money, on the basis that pretty much all the African records I still want are prohibitively expensive. I'd never spend $200, $500, $1000 even for one record. But if I got 16.5k it'd pretty tempting just to blow it out getting the rarest of the rare. (I tried to take a screenshot from Discogs to show some I'd be interested in, but blow me sideways the cheek of some people - €4000 for a VG 7", £1200 for a Blue Note LP from...2014, and £500 for X-Ray Spex 1st pressing that I have in my cart for £22 currently)
 
Kris said:
So give me the Rega and point me to Discogs...haha.
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Right, $16.5K is a lot of money but I’d make a decent dent on it by picking up the Beatles mono box and MoFis. Next, all the Bowie box sets. Then I’d direct my attention to some nice jazz pressings in the $50-$60 range that I usually scoff at, and probably splurge on some Miles MoFis as well… and that’s on top of a few white whales in the $100-$300 range (e.g. Ladytron - Velocifero, Beatles - Let It Be… Naked, etc.).

I live in a house in the Midwest so I can probably find the space to store it all.
 
I have been buying records & HiFi for 40 years now and I cannot get into my head the concept of splashing a lot of money on a turntable, I understand the cartridge makes a difference and spend good money on that part but without that to think about all a turntable has to do is spin at the required speed and support the said cartridge to enable it to sit on the spinning record with the correct weight applied other than that all the hard work is done by the pre amp/amp/speaker combination
I'll have the records please unless you can convince me otherwise
 
Well since you killed the hookers and blow option with the Rega, I’m going Vertere. 🤣

I can easily not buy records for a calendar year.
 
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Joe Mac said:
My entire worldview would generally be records and if you’d chosen a slightly less expensive option as the high end turntable I’d have gone that way. However, as I physically do not have the space for $17k more records in my apartment I would just have the crazy turntable for a year and see just what my Prima Luna and Wharfedale’s are capable of!
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The problem with borrowing crazy gear is you gotta pay or return it.

I should have bought the Manley gear I had on loan when I could have bought it at trade prices.
 
Smartiepants said:
I have been buying records & HiFi for 40 years now and I cannot get into my head the concept of splashing a lot of money on a turntable, I understand the cartridge makes a difference and spend good money on that part but without that to think about all a turntable has to do is spin at the required speed and support the said cartridge to enable it to sit on the spinning record with the correct weight applied other than that all the hard work is done by the pre amp/amp/speaker combination
I'll have the records please unless you can convince me otherwise
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If you can’t hear the difference, spend the money on records. It’s all part of a chain, and if any part of the chain is limiting, you won’t fully appreciate the TT. And for a lot of people, they percentage improvements don’t match the cash input. Just part of the game honestly.
 
Smartiepants said:
I have been buying records & HiFi for 40 years now and I cannot get into my head the concept of splashing a lot of money on a turntable, I understand the cartridge makes a difference and spend good money on that part but without that to think about all a turntable has to do is spin at the required speed and support the said cartridge to enable it to sit on the spinning record with the correct weight applied other than that all the hard work is done by the pre amp/amp/speaker combination
I'll have the records please unless you can convince me otherwise
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Old thread, but I can't resist. I'm a (recovering?) audiophile, edging my way to the discophile end of the spectrum. I have a love for equipment and bit of engineer's fanaticism with "proper" functioning systems. My rule of thumb is that your analog playback system (turntable+phono+cartridge) should generally not exceed the value of your collection. If you have a very extensive or expensive collection, you might benefit from incremental turntable investments which reduce distortion, resonance and speed variations.
 
Angsty said:
Old thread, but I can't resist. I'm a (recovering?) audiophile, edging my way to the discophile end of the spectrum. I have a love for equipment and bit of engineer's fanaticism with "proper" functioning systems. My rule of thumb is that your analog playback system (turntable+phono+cartridge) should generally not exceed the value of your collection. If you have a very extensive or expensive collection, you might benefit from incremental turntable investments which reduce distortion, resonance and speed variations.
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With the phono/turntable/cartridge not exceeding the value of my collection, I’ve got a ton of room for upgrades!

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Poly-Rythmo said:
I think realistically I'd take the turntable as I sort of have nearly all the records I want. But I am being tortured by the thought of the money, on the basis that pretty much all the African records I still want are prohibitively expensive. I'd never spend $200, $500, $1000 even for one record. But if I got 16.5k it'd pretty tempting just to blow it out getting the rarest of the rare. (I tried to take a screenshot from Discogs to show some I'd be interested in, but blow me sideways the cheek of some people - €4000 for a VG 7", £1200 for a Blue Note LP from...2014, and £500 for X-Ray Spex 1st pressing that I have in my cart for £22 currently)
Click to expand...
which 2014 blue note is £1200??
 
MikeH said:
never heard of this one but digging it! it's a shame that a few albums were only released as part of the BN75. Ambrose Akinmusire - The Imagined Savior... also comes to mind. I hope they release some of these albums again as part of the current series.
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It's really great. They've got so much modern stuff that they never pressed to wax (or like this in stupidly small quantities)
 
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