Crusaders Games

Rega Turntable

My other hobby of sorts alongside board gaming is my hifi and music and i thought i would document my second hand Rega turntable history as i made another return to vinyl.

I grew up playing vinyl as a teenager and loved it, but like many, once i bought my first flat in the late 80’s and left home i moved to concentrating on cd play and sold off all my records. Whilst i have made many good decisions about my hifi over the years, this was on reflection probably the worst one i ever made.  It is not actually that i advocate vinyl as the best sounding medium, although it often is, the interaction with a table of putting a record on is in itself for me a satisfying part of the music experience.

Back in 2008 i became a little nostalgic and bought a Rega Planar 2 with the green logo and an AT-95 cartridge for £145, at a time before there was any proper vinyl interest around. I enjoyed playing with this for a couple of years while searching for and purchasing second hand records, before a desire to upgrade my amplifier and cd player led to a sale, and another clear out of records. I really should have stored and kept this nice table for occasional use, particularly as i really liked the bright green logo style, but at this point new or re-releases on vinyl were still rare and i had decided to shrink my hifi footprint.

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A few years later in 2015, after i had moved house and my kids were a little older, i instigated my second return to turntables. This time a silver Rega RP1 with some modifications including a bias cartridge and RP3 style brace. I paid around £185 for this table, but i cannot honestly say i ever really loved it as a hifi item. I kept it a short while before selling it on as streaming took over my interest as a latest alternative alongside the cd player. One issue i also had at the time was that vinyl cost too much in comparison to a cd, and even charity shops started to ask higher prices for ungraded vinyl. However the general profile of vinyl was starting to rise, but the time was not right for me.

Moving onto the start of 2019, and my interest has again returned. Over the last couple of years i have bought the occasional re-release of limited edition vinyl for a few of my favourite older albums, and finally wanted something to actually play them on. An older head and eyes has in particular started to appreciate the size of album covers again versus cd inserts, with the ability to actually read the lyric sheets, and i have become fond of owning albums again.

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I made a considered return to try one more time, and while I was tempted to buy a new Rega Planar 2 straight off, i decided to play a longer game and test my resolve with another cheaper second hand table, which is after all half the fun of these experiments. So i bought a Rega Moth Alamo table with some modifications for £245, and it came with a Nagaoka MP-110 cartridge which was a nice addition. The table also had an acrylic platter, white belt, and alternative isolation feet. I needed a phono stage as well and picked up a Cambridge Audio CP1 for £50. For the sale of a largely unused headphone amplifier, i felt i did reasonably well. After setting everything up, I was surprised how good this deck sounded, it gave my much more expensive cd player a decent fight, and some vinyl i picked up, both original or newer 180g ones, actually did sound better and more vibrant than my cd versions. I am not going to say it is a better format every time, as it is probably more down to the recording transfer, however for the outlay i enjoyed this turntable, and it rekindled by love of playing vinyl music.

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A year on, at the start of 2020 i made some more major changes to my hi-fi set up, pruning out some accumulated equipment such as an Arcam dac i used for streaming and a small Oppo headphone dac that sat in a drawer, and moved the remaining streaming element of the system, a logitech touch, into the conservatory second system. I went more fully into building up my vinyl album collection again for my main system, for which i introduced a brand new Rega Planar 3 and Elys 2 cartridge, and selling the Rega Moth for slightly more than i paid for it. I also upgraded the Cambridge Audio CP1 to a Rega MK3 phono stage, and overall I broke even on all this trading.

Hifi Separates

Also in early 2020 i bought an ex demo Arcam SA20 amplifier which took over from the older Arcam FMJ A39 i previously had, and again with some nice trading i managed to break even on this change over too. The Rega Planar 3 now in place comes highly recommended from me even against my older but much more costly Arcam FMJ CD37 cd player which i really enjoy, and my vinyl collection is slowly growing, especially with the new limited edition releases being made of older albums i loved.

Summer 2023 and another hi-fi change as i finally bought a Naim amplifier, a long held dream of mine for many years, but my budget never really allowed me to dare pursue it. I sold my Arcam SA20 for what i paid for it, plus my Rega phono stage and treated myself to a Naim XS3. This amplifier quite frankly has considerably improved my music listening enjoyment, it is a fast paced, rhythmical listen, but not bright, and i find it much easier with older ears to follow the different instruments and melodies. I cannot praise it highly enough. My speakers which have been around since 2015 are Neat Motive SX2, and these are well known to work well with Naim equipment. My set up is one i am very happy with.

Main System > Arcam CD37 / Rega Planar 3 > Naim XS3 > Neat Motive SX2

Headphone System > Grado Hemp / Beyerdynamic T90 > Arcam rHead