I have been an early adopter of the cd. As a student I bought my first CD-player, a Philips CD-104; Built like a tank, 14-bit and it still works. The reasons to switch to CDs were simpel then: CD was high-tech, lower noise, no cracks/ticks and long-play. Over the last years we found out that digital in itself is not a label for quality and especially in the early 80's the first CD recordings were not all that great compared to LPs. Also, there have been significant developments/innovations in turntable design. Not only do they sound much better than 20 years ago, they look 20 years better.
Early in 2001 I visited Henk of Audioselectief in NL who would make me a pair of speaker cables. In
his shop a combination of Marantz equipment was playing and I liked the sound.
Since I have the same cdplayer (CD-17mk2) I shared my thoughts. His reaction
was something like: Yeah it's not bad at all, almost as good as a turntable
but that sounds better of-course.
Over the following months I listened to several turntables and was surprised about the sound of records. Much to my surprise vinyl was not dead at all. I had at that time an old Philips record player and that one was clearly not much of a comparison. So after a while I decided I wanted to buy my 'last' turntable and it better be good. My wife and I listen to music a lot and share the same tast for music and she supported my plans. The only constraint she gave me was that the turntable had to be good-looking too.
Henk was so friendly to borrow me a Clearaudio Champion to try at home. Within a few days we were convinced and ordered our own Champion (transparent).
The Clearaudio Champion is a turntable made
of Acrylic. This material has very good sonic characteristics, making the turntable
free from resonances. The Champion is available in black and transparent Acrylic
(I own the transparent one, but do not yet have pictures
of that one available). The Champion is a belt-drive turntable, the motor is
free-standing in a hole in the back-left corner of the base. Standard (in NL)
the Champion comes with a RB-250 arm (Rega OEM) and an Ortofon OMT-5 cartridge.
As upgrading an interlink and arm at a later moment is both more costly and a lot of work, we decided to order our Champion with a RB-300 arm and the better Quint interlink immediately. Since I did not have a good feel for the cartridge anyway, we decided for the standard cartridge at least initially.
The standard cartridge delivered with the Clearaudio Champion is an Ortofon OMT-5. This cartridge does not meet the standards of the champion, and although not a bad cartridge for the money, it should be replaced with something better as soon as possible.
One thing I learned about turntables last months:
The principle might me 
simple, but getting the most out of the arm-cartridge combination is an
art. Also not every combination of arm and cartridge will be a perfect match.
Since I do not have the time (and money) to try every combination myself, do not wish to join the group of audiophiles that are always in search of the next piece of equipment, I decided I needed an expert here. Fortunately, Henk is not only an expert in tuning turntables but he also listened to many arm-cartridge combinations and is able to advice such a combination based on your turntable, musical taste and budget (of-course budget is always the parameter suffering in this equation).
Maybe you will ask yourself: Where do I buy a turntable today. Let's be fair, all shops are loaded with DVD players and AV, Dolby Digital, 5+1 and DTS equipment. For the average consumer going digital is the standard.
Well, even today, it is not difficult to find a hifi store that's selling turntables. But unfortunately it is more difficult to find a salesperson that knows where he is talking about and it is nearly impossible to find a place where they can adjust and optimise your turntable settings. In other words: It's simple to have a turntable make noise but it is hard to get it to sing.
My recommendation is therefore simple: Find yourself a Hifi Specialist shop such as AudioSelectief in Sneek (NL).
And if you're looking for a used turntable have a look at ebay or other auction sites and get yourself a used Thorens or similar turntable. And don't forget to give it a check-up at your local Hifi specialist (or email Henk at Audioselectief)
© Maarten, 2001, 2002, 2003