I had been toying with the idea of buying a turntable, amp and speakers for a few years but put off by cost of vinyl. About a month ago I came into some money and bit the bullet. I popped into Loud and Clear on Sauchiehall St "just for a look" I told myself....ha!
I had been looking at Rega turntables and liked the look of them, the reviews were good. So when I was approached by one of the sales guys I mentioned I quite liked them and other than that had no idea what else would go with it. He asked if I would like to hear it in action and suggested I pick a couple of albums to try it out. I flicked through a vast pile of vinyl picking Tom Waits' My Blue Valentine, Love and Money's Strange Kind of Love and Led Zeppelin 1. Within about 10 seconds of "Somewhere" I was sold, thinking I've got to have this bad boy
Back when I was at High School I used to buy vinyl weekly, occasionally 2 albums a week. I would save my £5 pocket money and about £3 dinner money a week, enough to buy 2 albums at the then price of £3.99. My collection consisted of lots of rock from AD/DC to Jethro Tull and Rush eventually expanding into all sorts of music. Then CDs ca,e along and the cost of vinyl shot up to ridiculous levels and became harder to get! Record shops like Listen, Virgin, 23rd precinct, Stereo 1 in Paisley disappeared. Fortunately I never binned my vinyl and for 20 years they were up my loft on a box. Amazingly these were in great condition and undamaged.
Since buying my new turntable I have bought about a dozen albums, they are dearer than £3.99 that I was paying in the early 1980s but they are so much better than CDs....I can even read the lyrics and credits , which my ageing eyes struggle with!
I would recommend this to anyone, although I still use Spotify/Sonos every couple of days I'll stick on anything from Neil Young to War on Drugs and crank up the amp.....so much richer sounding than "clean" CDs, hopefully the price and availability will improve.
Go on treat yourselves.