Buying a turntable

Body: You want a solid turntable body, which means no plastic. While plastic brings down the cost of a turntable it also vibrates too much. Keeping down vibration is the name of the game when it comes to decks. Also, plastic turntables are too light, which makes them easier to skip. While the best turntables have some sort of suspension, it isn't required. You just have to walk a little lighter around the turntable.

Motor: Try not to get a direct-drive turntable. (In direct-drive, the motor than spins the platter is directly coupled to the spindle.) The only advantage to direct-drive is that it keeps speed variations down. The disadvantage is that is causes vibration. What you're looking for is a belt-drive turntable, where the motor is connected to the spindle by a band, which absorbs a good amount of vibrations.

Tonearm: Most high-end turntables won't include a stylus or tonearm, usually because audiophiles are notorious tweakers. The best tonearms are single metal tubes, again because of less vibration. Most tone-arms also have features like anti-skating and bearing sets. The importace of a good tone-arm can't be understated so don't worry about over-spending.

Stylus: Your turntable is only as good as your stylus. Don't worry about dropping cash on a stylus, because you'll notice the difference. I suggest an elliptical stylus, as they seem to be the best quality for the price. Remember, you'll have to change them occasionally so don't get too attached.

Motor: For DJing, you'll probably want a direct-drive motor. It "grips" better and get up to speed much faster than a belt-drive motor. Plus, they can take much more wear, though you'll probably have to replace them down the road.

Tonearm: A DJ's tonearm needs to be fairly heavy to prevent jumping out of the grooves. However, due to the added weight your records will wear out faster.

Stylus: A DJ's stylus has to be able to take a beating. I suggest Shure or Stanton and Numark has a pretty cool cartridge with a built in light. (I can't say anything about it's quality, but the light sounds kind of nifty)

Slipmat: A slipmat allows the platter to keep spinning at a constant rate while you hold the record, but immediately grips the record when you release it.

Others: First, pitch control is required, as it makes beat matching much, much easier. Also, make sure the turntable has nice stable feet. You don't want the thing jumping or sliding around on whatever surface you're mixing on.

In recent times, the 20-year reign of the Technics SL-1200 turntable for DJ use has come into question. The popularity of two new models from long-time competitors Vestax (with the PDX-2000) and Numark (with the TTX1) has actually driven down the list price of SL-1200. Whether this popularity is due to the large price difference between the new models and the venerable 1200s is unknown. No matter what, it pays to know the marketplace.

The Contenders

Stanton Magnetics - Stanton (known as Pickering in some locales) has been around turntables for a long time. They invented the first removable headshell, and they have both top-of-the-line and budget DJ equipment, including mixers, turntables, and needles (They are Ortofon's biggest competitor). We can't forget Final Scratch either.

Numark - Numark produces mixers, CD players, and turntables. Until recently they had a reputation for not having the most reliable gear, but of late they have gone straight after Technics' market share. Numark owns Alesis.

Vestax - Vestax produce some of the most popular scratch mixers on the market. They also manufacture turntables that can be played at ridiculous angles, so you can wear your Vestax like a guitar, just like in Tone Loc's Wild Thing video! Vestax also produces a home vinyl cutter, which is actually affordable.

Denon - Denon is best known for making CD players. I believe they were the first to market a turntable with digital outputs and key lock.

Gemini - Gemini manufactures pretty everything you might need for a DJ setup: turntables, CD players, mixers, needles, speakers, or whatever. Most of it is budget equipment modeled after higher-end gear, sort of like Behringer but lower quality. One step up from American DJ, who isn't even worth mentioning.

The key to the Technics' long-time domination of the turntable market is its long-time domination of the turntable market. Technics 1200s and 1210s are the standard turntable in clubs around the world. They got there through high-torque motors, extreme durability, and very accurate pitch control.

Several other brands have since surpassed most of these important factors, but it wasn't until recently that people have started to notice; the Technics brand was just too strong. Now that other companies have started adding interesting features, customers are taking notice of what the Technics model lacks.

Bells and Whistles

Quartz Lock - The Technics SL-1200 Mk2 has an annoying detent at the 0% mark of the pitch control. This causes serious problems when you need mix in a record at 0.2% of its original pitch, and the pitch slider keeps going right back to zero! argh. The SL-1200 MK3D removed this detent, and added a switch to change the pitch to exactly 0%.

Adjustable Pitch Control - The original 1200s' pitch slider only goes from -8% to +8%. Sometimes, the 8% is just not enough, so some turntables allow +/- 10%, 12%, sometimes even 20% or 50% pitch control.

Strobe Dots - This feature is so common it's almost a requirement. The power-on indicator on many turntables is actually a strobe light. Right next to it on the base of the turntable, you may see something like:

+5
+3.3
0
-3.3

Pitch Bend - Pitch Bends are two little keys that temporarily set the pitch to its maximum or minimum. They're used as an alternative to actually touching the platter to adjust your beatmatching. These are present on a number of Gemini decks.

Key Lock - Key lock is a newer feature on high-end turntables. Typically, when a record spins faster, the sound on the record gets higher and vice versa. Key lock reverses this effect.

S/PDIF output - In the future, we will all have digital mixers and an entirely digital signal path up until the speaker. Turntables with S/PDIF output digitize the sound on the record before sending it out to the mixer. These models typically have normal analog outputs too.

Line output - Many turntables with S/PDIF output also have built-in phono preamps so you can use them with any mixer.

Reverse switch - This should be self-explanatory.

BPM counter - This is normally found on a mixer or as a separate box, but the Numark TTX1 has a builtin BPM counter.

Adjustable Startup and Stop times - Typically, hitting the start/stop button will make your turntable start up as fast as possible, or hit the brakes as hard as possible, sometimes hard enough to spin the platter backwards. Some newer models allow you to set the brakes and acceleration to a very slow climb or descent.

Under no circumstances should you even consider buying a belt-drive turntable for DJ use!