I used to have a Pioneer direct-drive turntable with an Ortofon low-mass cartridge. Pretty snobby stuff in it's day. I about cried when I saw what the kid did to it, and what the cat did to my Optimus tower bass-reflex speakers. Apparently those woofers were an excellent scratching post. Fortunately they didn't get to the Mach One pair (15-inch woofers, 200 watt rated). I immediately dismantled the stereo setup, and moved the remains down to my workshop. I listen to the Mach One pair when working on stuff down there, with an iPod connected to the amp. I still have a Magnavox (I think) "all-in-one" setup with a turntable built-in, but I just can't bring myself to listen to a record on it. The Pioneer spoiled me. To tie this topic in to astronomy, right now I'm working on 2 old GEM mounts. One is an old Jaegers mount with 1" shafts. My friend Bob Grant machined an adapter to my specifications, that allows me to attach a Losmandy dovetail clamp where the old, stock tube cradle used to be. I can then use all my medium-sized scopes that use a Losmandy dovetail plate on it. I won't have to set up the CGEM when I don't need the computerized or GoTo aspects, but just a synchronous-motor driven RA drive. I bought an Atlas dovetail clamp from Orion a few months ago, when it was on-sale for something like 29 bucks, and it's going to work perfectly in this application. I'm also doing the same thing to an old Edmund GEM with 5/8" shafts, only this smaller mount will carry a Scopestuff Vixen-style clamp shoe, for smaller scopes. Again, Bob turned the adapter flange and he's helping me make a RA drive with a gear & motor set purchased from Sheldon Faworski. I'll be making 12VDC DEC drives for both as well, once they are up and running. So sometimes that old tech still has a lot of life in it, as you point out with the LP resurgence, Rich. On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 3:32 PM, Richard Tenney <retenney@yahoo.com> wrote:

You can buy a decent turntable (with a USB cable even!) nowadays for under $100. Vinyl has made somewhat of a comeback for audiophiles -- don't abandon those LP's yet! There's a fair market for some of them. My youngest has a turntable and several (new) albums on vinyl actually.