As an owner of a store that sells records to many people getting into the format for the first time. The standard reply to someone considering a Crosley turntable for their first record player is "Don’t do it, if you want to keep your records in even a remotely playable condition.
I don’t like to be overly negative, but aside from the major labels continuing to raise their prices of new releases, Crosley turntables will be the next most likely factor to turn new customers off to playing records as a past time.
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I have worked in the Audio industry for many years. Crosley players are absolute and utter garbage. There is nothing worse on the market. You would be much better off with a vintage Califone, or similar player that these pieces of trash try and fail to mimic. These things have a very high failure rate, and have a very poor quality cartridge that is sure to damage your records.
As a vinyl fan from back in the day, it is so sad that many will have a very poor first experience with vinyl, thanks to these junky products.
To be fair, anyone buying this item is not going to be concerned with sound quality. This is purely a novelty item.
As for the eighties being the pinnacle of audio equipment quality, I wonder if you’ve looked at audio equipment lately? If anything, turntables have gotten much better, not to mention cartridges and phono preamps. Take a look at VPI turntables, alone. There are more amplifier designs than you could shake a stick at now, which was not the case in the eighties.
Based on the comments I’ve seen here, it seems a lot of people are under the impression that records and turntables are a thing of the past. I’ve been buying records continuously since the sixties, (I bought CDs beginning in 1987, and quit those around '95), and there was only a short period between the time record stores started cutting back on records, and prior to the rise of the internet, when records were harder to get - not impossible. But, that was years ago.
“If your spouse or partner doesn’t find the hisses and pops of vinyl recordings charming…”, then you should learn how to take care of your records. Another misconception about records is that they’re noisy. Records I’ve owned for decades sound brand new. Which is to say, no hisses, pops, or skips.
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Agree- hisses pops and skips are the sounds of an abused record.
Heck, I have records I’ve used to (abuse) in scratch dj routines, and they still don’t have terrible hisses pops or skips. And those have had all manner of ill-advised use thrown at them.
It seems that some people see (hear?) record noise as “cool” and “retro”. I blame nineties hip-hop CDs, which often would introduce false record noise at the beginning of a cut. Now that these albums are being re-released on vinyl - ouch!
I, too, was a DJ in the eighties and nineties. Didn’t do any scratching, (punk club), but in spite of all the other wretched excess that went on in that booth, I took care of the records, and it shows.
I do own records that have real-not-added scratch and hiss/pop, but they’re recordings from the early part of last century, and let’s say the recording gear was… sub-optimal. So those sounds are baked in, as it were.
Thinking of things like “Robert Johnson King of the Delta Blues” etc etc
That’s (clearly) not me. Sadly.
Right. There are pressings whose only source is another 78 rpm. Records made in the acoustic era, before magnetic tape, and records whose original tape has been lost, or has disintegrated. Maybe that’s the origin of “noisy, scratchy = old-timey”?
I’ve blown the minds of younger folks by playing them Jazz recordings from the fifties, especially stereo recordings made with two microphones in the room. Because a lot of Rock recordings from the early/mid-sixties are crappy, (took them awhile to figure out how to record amplified instruments), a lot of people are under the impression that all recording was crap back then. Of course, George Martin did ok with four-track. ; )
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