Equipment

    I will keep the section on equipment brief if I can, otherwise we will be here all day, and I am by no means an expert. Equipment boils down to budget constraints, and simple research. There is a plethora of tutorials and guides to this sort of thing which can be found with a simple Google search, so I will just be covering some basics. 
    First thing's first, you see that multimedia player up at Walmart, or Best Buy, etc? It looks so pretty doesn't it, so vintage? Looks useful too doesn't it? It has everything, turntable, CD player, cassette player, AM/FM radio, USB, smartphone dock, microwave oven, so great...NO-WAH!!! Don't buy it, ask to see a manager and tell them to send it back to whatever hell it came from, offer to do it for them, demand justice, go full Karen on these things. Simply put, this type of machine (if you can call it that, it is made from as few cheap parts as the manufacturer can get away with, and covered in glued sawdust), will murder your records in the most merciless way imaginable. If you hate music and like to waste money, by all means enjoy. All-in-one units have been a boil on the butt of enjoying good music for decades, but it's even worse now, at least some of the vintage units had more than three parts and a spool of thread inside.
    Buy a turntable that is affordable, and reliable. Usually this can be accomplished for about 100 bucks (that's just a turntable, you're not off the hook that easily) for a new unit. A serviced vintage turntable is going to cost more, and is not necessary unless you just like to brag about owning rare, high end stuff (these insufferable people exist, believe me). Two things that I cannot recommend enough, look for a turntable with a removable headshell and cartridge (that little thing you sit on the record), and a counterweight (that heavy looking thing on the other end of the playing doohickey, for future reference, that's called a tonearm). Whether you end up preferring a belt drive turntable, or a direct drive turntable is a whole other ball of wax, you're on your own there.
    Lastly, get some decent stereo equipment. Now those insufferable guys will tell you that you cannot be in their little music club unless you spend 10,000 bucks just on speaker cables (and don't forget the cable risers, because speaker wire hates your outdated carpet. All you need is a good receiver, an equalizer (not required, but can't hurt either), and speakers that are rated for the equipment you buy. If you want more powerful speakers on an under-powered receiver, you'll need an amplifier or a receiver (which has its own built in amp) rated for those speakers. There is no smell in this world (except maybe the smell of burning hair) worse than the smell of a cooked speaker.
    This by no means comes close to covering everything, there is the stylus (needle), which has to be replaced occasionally (And we're back to the different ways of getting kicked out of a record store. Method #2: Lift the tonearm and drop the stylus on the record as hard as you can, goodbye stylus, goodbye record, and as the song says..."goodbye to you"). You might want to be a purist and go with a tube amp for a warmer sound, etc. Equipment is a rabbit hole, enter at your own risk. Suffice it to say however that a person could put together a decent unit for a few hundred dollars and be just fine (not counting the cost of replacement belts, which are cheap, and replacement/upgraded styli, which could be cheap, or not, your choice really).


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