How To Choose The Right Record Player

Everything you need to know about turntables

Your record player really should be the star of your system. The beating heart of your set up might be the amplifier, and the speakers are its face, but your source is why you built the system in the first place. It is dictated by how you want to consume music, and you’ll interact with no other component as much as you do a turntable.

That puts quite a bit of pressure on choosing the right one, however, and with so many variables and so much choice, it can help to have a hand to hold through the process. That’s what we’ll try to provide here.

We’ll talk you through how to budget and all the items you’ll need to consider, what your options are in terms of features, and how to set it up for the best possible sound.

So whether you’re in the market for a first record player, or you’re looking to upgrade from something that just isn’t doing it for you any more, read on for our complete guide to buying a turntable.

BUDGET

If you’ve done any sort of research before arriving at this page, you’ll likely have encountered a huge number of all-in-one, briefcase-style record players with enticingly low prices to match their basic straightforwardness. If this is what you’re after, then we’d ask you only to check the tracking weight of the cartridge – many of them can track at around 10g, which is four or five times heavier than ideal and more than capable of ripping your vinyl to shreds.

All the ones we’ve heard sound poor, too, but the point here is that unless you’ve really set your heart on an all-in-one vinyl system, then your turntable budget will also have to stretch to at least a speaker of some sort (and maybe some stands).