Turntables

Fortunately for all you “vinyl junkies” in DJ land, record players or “turntables” are still being massproduced
and more popular than ever. New professional turntables can easily run you from $800-$1,500
a pair. There are less expensive options; you can often find this equipment for sale used in classified
advertisements or on an Internet auction site. I sold a bunch of my old equipment on eBay for much less
than I bought it for. 

As a matter of fact, vinyl is still so cool that a company called Vestax, well known for its popular mixers,
manufactures a pretty amazing unit that records audio from any source, CDs, MP3 players, microphones,
computers, or whatever else you can plug into it directly on to Vestax vinyl blank records. Imagine having the ability to press your own vinyl—how cool would that be! Vestax’s VRX-2000 unit has a small cutting
head that actually cuts the grooves into the vinyl blanks. These recordable records will hold up to 14
minutes of audio on each side. The stylus cutter is replaceable, and has an average lifespan of 200-300
minutes of recorded audio. At about $375 per cutter, this can get kind of pricey if you decide to make a
lot of records. Oh, and the unit itself is in the neighborhood of $9,000. 


Professional turntables differ from consumer versions in several ways. Pro turntables have a “pitch”
(speed) control, which allows you to physically change the speed of the record with a sliding control. This
allows you to speed up or slow down your incoming record so that you can more easily “mix” the two
records for a smooth transition between songs. Most pro turntables will allow you to speed up or slow
down a record by 8% or more. Pro tables are much more durable than consumer tables, and this is very
important if you’re going to be throwing them in the back of your car and slamming through potholes on
your way to gigs. 


Most pro turntables have a colored strobe light on them with little metal nubs on the platter. These are
used to show that your turntable platter is rotating faster or slower than exactly 33 1/3 or 45 revolutions
per minute (RPM). 


Pro turntables usually have a mechanism known as “quartz lock,” which helps make the speed constant
when locked in the zero-pitch change position. I’ve heard of some DJs having the quartz lock removed for
more control while mixing, but I never found this necessary.