suddenly i find myself down the rabbit hole of thinking of getting into vinyl records — anyone else collect? any thoughts? tips? good places/bad places to buy? thoughts on players? amps?
Having had a large vinyl collection in the past, I am almost luxuriously happy to be freed from that and never have one again 
I do know, however, if I were buying another turntable today, it would be a Technics SL1200. No substitute for the Wheels of Steel.
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Yep - when I was at RIT i used to lug around over 2,000 albums, moving every year in/out of the dorms (I was an RA all the years past freshman year).
Then CDs came and I (stoopidly) sold them all and bought CDs.
Then streaming came and I sold all my CDs.
Now, back at the vinyl game and LOVE IT.
I come to Rochester a lot for work and you sir, live in the single best place for record shopping that ever was, even today with so many places gone. Bop Shop is best quality and great selection. Record Archive to me is #2, but, you can have a beer while you shop, so there is that. They tend to sell great quality as well as crap, so you have to be more careful. The HOG is a big friggin mess for vinyl but if you have an afternoon and are patient, can be an adventure. There is a good store in Syracuse too, Sound Garden. These alone will keep you busy. My old favorite, Lakeshore Record Exchange (based on your music tastes you have shared, you would have loved) is long gone sadly. I buy a lot of stuff when I come up there.
Hard to find stuff is best found for sale on Discogs.com, where all vinyl is graded etc and sellers are generally really good. You can buy from around the world on Discogs. The only downside is you don’t have the thrill of the ‘hunt’.
Discogs also lets you set up want lists so you can get notified when things come up for sale, and you can keep your catalog up there to and share with others.
Note - CD era stuff (a lot of late 80s era alt and new wave stuff) is not readily available on vinyl in US but can be found in Europe. These also tend to get released as new pressings now and quality now is outstanding.
We have a thread here for folks who share their own collections, check it out here:
Hi-Fi lounge on Monroe near 12-corners is a great turntable store with vinyl. I have known Mark (owner) for over 30 years, he is a great guy and a good place to start on the turntable journey (yet another rabbit hole).
Stop in and he will give you an education on where to start.
I have a Pro-ject Debut Carbon turntable and got an upgraded cartridge from Mark.
The cartridge upgrade was a very noticable improvement. He can guide you into the craziness. Most turntable places online are not the best for asking questions. Drives me nuts as once you are past the first few price points, prices get insane very fast.
I have mine connected to my Sonos system so can’t say much for amps/speakers.
The Sonos Play 5 system (pair with a turntable and preamp) is a great way to keep things simple and not go down the amp/speaker (yet even more) rabbit holes.
If you do dive in, invest in a good vinyl cleaning system.
They are not cheap but really worth it.
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Excellent and important point.
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WHEELS OF STEEL
There’s a reason literally every DJ used them. And still uses them.
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Ya they are great for sure. A few features the average Joe doesn’t need though. I’m not gaga over my turntable but never see anything worth changing to, even this, not worth it but a great place to start. That said there are good options a little cheaper. If I did it again I might do this one though.
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Yeah definitely (though the drive speed slider could be useful for calibration if things are out of spec, which happens all the time).
I love that it has a built-in strobe tuner. That post sticking up has a 60Hz light in it that shines on the strobe dots on the side of the wheel. You can see where it is compared to the target RPM just by looking at the side of the wheel, which works just like a Petersen Strobostomp. Then fine tune with the slider.
Not just for beat-matching
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My husband has bought a stylus or two (styli?) at Turntableneedles.com with good results. They also sell belts, cartridges, etc. Has anyone else tried that company for supplies? They also sell a few vinyl records (29 are shown).
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I knew if I started a record collection I would be addicted so I avoided it for a long time. Then for my birthday a couple years ago my buddy got me a cheap turntable and my favorite album. It didn’t take long for me to upgrade my turntable, then I went to my mom’s house and she gave me my dad’s old Technics turntable. I had to get a new platter, belt and cartridge for it.
I have over 90 records now and have really been enjoying them.
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vinyl turns into turntables, tubeamps. music room, listening chair…,$$$$$$$
My co-worker belonged to a sterophile group out of Austin, Tx back in the early 2000s.
Weekly meetings
All walks of life; rich and poor.
They, as a group, had big money/connections and blind tested the best and worst of everything.
The results of almost every blind test resulted in the $mid-range$ products. being the best Amps Turntables, speakers and so forth.
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Although the ad wasn’t for vinyl, same effect for listening to vinyl in your listening chair!
https://youtu.be/Zjf5pdJJ44Q
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Part of the issue with really really expensive turntables is they are very very finicky and have to be adjusted ‘just so’ for good results.
I an not crazy about my Pro-Ject mainly for a couple of dumb design choices they used which limit a few accessory options, and their customer service is terrible.
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that ad sold many blank cassettes back in the day
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I am pretty hugely into vinyl. As a matter fact I sell audio gear for a living. Here is a setup I did for a client recently.
And here is one of the setups at work. No turntable in this picture, but have a look at what I was listening to 
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It surely did. I probably have a few Maxell cassettes still lingering around. Whether or not they are playable is another question. We do have one radio/cassette player (not hi-fi) that I could try them on.
Ah, the old days of mix tapes!
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I still have all my vinyl and CD’s since the late 70’s. The Technics SL-1500C is more recent (the home version of the DJ SL1200). My bases (and some of my vinyl) are just out of shot
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@alexmorrison14 Looks like a sizable collection. How many albums would you say you have?
I don’t think I’ve actually counted mine in a good long while, but I believe I have somewhere around 300-350 LPs. Picture your lowest two shelves (8 sections), but packed full. Then I inherited my parents’ old albums, so now have a small auxiliary pile of loose ones nearby (mainly Tijuana Brass, Engelbert Humperdinck, other odds n’ ends of the 1960s, and so on). Their 45 rpm collection is another topic, as is my own.
From the latter group of LPs, I listened (and regaled the rest of the house) to the Mantovani’s “Manhattan” album within the last couple of weeks. I was spurred on to do so when my oldest son was playing one of the songs from it on the piano, from his Christmas gift, “100 Movie Songs for Piano Solo” book. Maybe I’ll see if I have Engelbert’s rendition of “Les Bicyclettes de Belsize,” another in that book which he’s played, to play for him - the book has no lyrics.
CSN&Y’s “Deja View” is next up in rotation, from my own collection. I’m just waiting for my youngest son to have some free time to listen to it.
I described my audio setup here (such as it is), in the thread “Show Us Your Stereos.”
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I will have to have a count up. I would say a third of my collection is probably 12"
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~1988 in college (RIT 6th floor NRH @mgoldst) this was the beginnings of my collection. Those wooden crates were huge and heavy but made for a great “console”.
There’s also a few hundred cassettes on the wall (out of picture) of other peoples albums I was too poor to buy myself.
I was an RA both in year and summers. so this got moved every spring and fall from one dorm to another.
This was about a year or so before the great CD massacre of all things vinyl. I eventually went to 2 turntables and a Radio Shack mixer for non-stop music.
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