Can anyone help me set up my new turntable?

Hello,

A good mate just gave me his old deck (a Project 2) and I'd like to elicit some advice about getting it serviced and set up 'properly' from you knowledgeable, beautiful bastards as I'm fucking clueless with these contraptions (I'm a digital voodoo child). Mate is uncontactable on a remote island but told me "it's easy, you'll work it out".

Here she is:

From doing some cursory research online I believe all I need to do is get a cartridge (recommendations?) and get it balanced.

The glass platter and plastic lid were wrecked en route so need to replace those at some point but don't think that's important for the time being (or is it?) as I'll be using it purely for sampling purposes.

Any tips, wisdom, guidance and/or direction would be greatly appreciated as I feel I owe it to my mate and myself not to fuck it up.

Sorry for the shamefully noob question. Feel free to ridicule me mercilessly.

Cheers,

Dean

Err...how do I delete this thread? I should probably have posted this in the General Banter section since it has basically nothing to do with knob-twiddling.

Sorry

Ta

I'll just move it to the right place instead ...... clip in and hold on tight !

  On 3/11/2015 at 12:36 PM, mcbpete said:

I'll just move it to the right place instead ...... clip in and hold on tight !

Thank you

Hey, you'll also need a separate pre-amp to boost the signal to line level. Project also do ok preamps, it's just a small box that will sit in between your turntable and hifi. Cartridge wise, shure m44-7's are 'industry standard' type, you can't really go wrong with that. Also you say it's for sampling, so will it be going straight into an audio interface? I don't know about the project 2 but it probably has a separate ground wire, so make sure your preamp has a grounding post to hook it to cos your audio interface won't. If not, you'll get ground hum. Enjoy :)

Also it stands to reason that you don't need a pre-amp if you're already running it into an amp that has a built in phono stage. They stopped really making amps with phono pres as standard in the early 90s so you probs will need a preamp

Thanks for the advice, brother. Greatly appreciated!

Is balancing something that I can do myself or best to take it to an audio shop?

you'll need a hammer...

Check.

The glass platter's essential, right? Parcel Force fucked that to smithereens...

  On 3/11/2015 at 7:16 PM, sheatheman said:

you'll need a hammer...

  On 3/11/2015 at 7:17 PM, Dean Carbin said:

Check.

 

The glass platter's essential, right? Parcel Force fucked that to smithereens...

From the photo, looks like you just need a slipmat and you'll be good to go. As I said, I don't own the turntable you've got so could be wrong, but the glass platter is almost definitely not essential. Maybe gives a marginal improvement in sound? Just make sure you're able to adjust the tonearm down as you won't have the extra height of the glass platter raising the record.

What do you mean by balancing? Do you mean the tonearm? You should be able to adjust that yourself, after you've fitted a cartridge. Dunno how to calibrate that model but the object of the game is to get the needle resting as lightly as possible on the record without it skating :) unless you're gonna be scratching ;)

Just to clarify, by 'dunno how to calibrate that model' I just mean I wouldn't know how to raise/lower the tonearm or if it has anti-skate. The balancing is done with the counterweight at the other end of the tonearm, you just need to quickly google how to do it, it's easy :) but needs to be done after you've got your cartridge and slipmat