If you have some time, patience and reasonably good playback gear it’s not very expensive at all. If you’re serious about it, you can drop some extra money on fancy software and better/specialized equipment (there are always ways to spend loads more money in the audio world), but it can be done on a shoestring budget with results that should be fine for casual listening.
But then if you want to digitize your records for casual listening, you’re probably better off picking up CDs or digital downloads, or even using a streaming service.
I look at my record collection and there’s really only a small handful of items that I can’t easily replace in digital form without the hassle of digitizing them myself.
There’s very, very little out there that’s both completely unplayable with a stylus and so rare that a better copy isn’t an option. Hence the scarcity of laser turntables.
AFAIK they’re used mainly for archival work because they have the benefit of being able to read the entire groove down to the very bottom, which is what you want when you’re trying to save an ultra-rare item that’s probably all scratched up. Presumably you’d still have to clean the record to get as much dust out of the grooves as possible.
Now consider the audiophile who has a five-figure budget for a turntable. They are probably a bit of an analogue snob. Someone who will stay up all night arguing that the whole point of listening to records is that they’re analogue. They’re going to spend their dough on an ultra-deluxe turntable with a stylus. If they have anything that’s too beat up to play, they’ll get themselves a fresh copy even if it’s ultra-rare and costs hundreds of dollars.
Shit, in my day we had to use a pin, pencil, and cone of construction paper. (And, it actually worked pretty well – by which I mean you could actually hear the record… it was certainly hell on the grooves but it made for a fun kid’s science project.)
You kids have it so easy these days with your Bluetooth enabled record destroyers.
ah, but now you have to factor in the cost of retaining a good lawyer.
Ah, I remember seeing this once before!
I do actually agree that VHS gave a lot of movies a certain “look” that sometimes was a bit spoiled when seeing them in a better resolution.
It’s a similar experience to seeing a movie now at 60 fps instead of 24. It makes a familiar movie look alien and not quite right.
If you’re lucky you can find a record that has only been played with a dull needle so the bottom is untouched.
I remember the VW model being featured in an old issue of Grand Royal aka the Beastie Boys’ magazine. I thought it would be cool for record hunting since they’re portable, but I never actually saw one or heard them play. I found a nice Fisher Price portable that I put a new needle on that I used to take around with me, though. No batteries on my model, unfortunately, but flea markets and thrift stores didn’t care if you plugged in. The crate-digging-DJ market later begat better versions of the old battery-powered toy versions specifically for this purpose, plus you can really dj with them. the Vestax Handy Trax was the flagship model. Here’s 45 King (of Flavor Unit and “the 900 Number” aka Yo MTV Raps theme fame) showing us mere mortals how it’s done
@Israel_B, @Grey_Devil, @jmcgarry, @ficuswhisperer, @TobinL, @FGD135 @ChuckV this footage was shot by the interviewer in that previous post
I get it now.
It’s a device to erase records.
You can usually hear new things by playing a record with a better stylus. And I’m sure that’s the main reason why laser 'tables are so expensive – they exist at the high end of the audiophile world, alongside similarly priced (or more expensive) conventional turntables fitted with styli engineered (and even handcrafted) to read as much of the groove as possible.
I remember the first time I saw Tone Loc’s Wild Thing video I was obsessed with the wearable turntable his DJ had.
No idea if that was a real thing or not, but it sure was amazing.
Can you imagine how cool that would be for record hunting?
I remember thinking the exact same thing and, as I gradually learned DJing, coming to the disappointing conclusion that I would never be able to scratch standing up like that, the needle would never track. It was just Hollywood bullshit. But the machine itself seems authentic and pretty awesome!
They make little “handy-trax”-type models with a little switch to use like a crossfader for scratching on them now. My friend brought me his to use during a power outage, pretty cool.
Yeah, talk about a bummer. Thinking of the engineering challenges, needle pressure required to hold it into place would just shred the groove walls completely. This was one of the principal problems of those automotive record players; the high needle pressure designed to prevent skipping while driving ruined the records (HT to @FGD135 for beating me to it).
It sure made for a wonderfully fanciful prop, though.
There were a couple of pretty decent vertical turntables in the 80s, and there’s this thing now:
Do you really hate your records that much?
It is a way to show off your liquid-filled records:
Or the sand-filled ones:
I’d like to see this thing try 78rpm records …
and then fling itself off into space.
There was a streetkid in Ottawa back in the day (circa 1990, yikes) who had nothing but a crate of records and a vertical turntable hung on a strap across his chest. He dressed clean and was a sweet guy. Introduced me to Gong and Tones on Tail on that thing. Never saw another one or really found out what it was.
Tones on Tail’s Night Music was the first CD I ever bought. 1986.
