Suggest a turntable for a non-dj

I need a turntable for the sole purpose of just playing vinyle so I can sample them into my mpc. What would be a good turntable for this purpose? Something I can get for less than $100 off ebay.

I asked my friend and he said it should be direct drive.

Your friend is right. Belt drive tables are crap even if you aren't going to be doing any dj stuff on it. Technics made about 14 million different models over past decades that would probably suit your needs fine. A lot of them are kind of cheap so be careful what you get, but I've had a couple that were pretty nice. No comparison to 1200's but they work...

WRONG

all audiophile turntables are belt drive, they are the finest turntables on earth. direct drive is only good for dj'ing, so you get a quick startup.

a $100 turntable is going to be crap no matter what, for sampling most people use 1200's (because they're also dj's) but if you were into just getting a high quality audiophile turntable which would be {censored}ing amazing for sampling i'd suggest a rega planar with a benz micro silver cart, but that'll run you a good $1000 which is 10 times more than you want to pay.

Yes, but this guy's talking about buying a $100 piece of junk, not dropping a grand on a piece of audiophile gear. If I have to choose between a belt drive piece of junk and a direct drive piece of junk, I'll take direct every time for its reliability and performance regardless of what might be gained by going with a belt drive. For the money I still think that's the best option.

You guys are way too cocky with your answers, especially since dj's are not respected as musicians by 99% of other musicians. You guys are talkin about all sub$100 record players are piece of junk, and I gotta use technic 1200 to sample... oh please. The quality of play back doesnt even matter so much as the quality of the machine (running correctly and not breaking down on me). In fact, the worst quality playback, the better... (if you know anything about sampling for hip hop than u know that gritty sound is loved). I was asking for the quality name brands and or models out there so I dont get a machine that breaks down on me after a week. Again, quality of playback is not that important.

But you know what? You all can forget about this thread... I decided not to even get a turntable. I am a musician and I am going to continue making original music, without samples. For my throw away beats that I dont care about and basically give away ffor free, I will just sample mp3's and add that vinyl sound with a high pass filter and some distortion plugins I have. And if I ever decide that I want to sample from a record, I will just use my old sesame street record player I got when I was like 4 years old.

PeaCe

In Hip Hop, The Technics SL-1200 turntable is the standard.

at $100 it doesn't matter if it's a belt drive or a direct drive, it's a piece of {censored} either way. pretty much all sub-$100 turntables are equally crappy.

but your reply to our answers is not the least bit cocky.

1: most dj's are not musicians

2: %99 of musicians are also morons

3: respected does not=talented or worthwhile

actually if you go back and read i never said you need a 1200 to sample i simply said most people are using 1200's to sample vinyl because they are, YOU can do whatever the {censored} YOU want.

right, and as i said a sub $100 turntable is a piece of junk, in other words it will be low quality and likely break down on you

and if you know anything about sampling for hip hop you'd know they usually sample with 1200's and the grittiness does not come from the turntable but rather from the gain on the turntable mixer/how hot you sample it. and yes i do produce hip hop and do sample vinyl often.

technics is a good brand of low cost turntables but again, a sub $100 turntable is most likely going to be a piece of {censored}, unless you happen to score an amazing deal on an actually worthwhile turntable

it will still perform like crap and probably die on you

suit yourself. and i will continue to create original music using samples, many of which i sampled from my vinyl collection.

there you go. sounds like a plan.

You music is not original if you are sampling from other peoples work.

if i'm stealing their compositions it is not original, if i am taking sounds which previously exist and altering them to something that did not previously exist and using them in a new original composition it very much is original.

or else no one is original because they did not make the synth/sampler/sequencer/guitar/bass/drums which they used to make music, nor all of it's possible uses for sound.

it all depends on what you're doing with the samples.

puff daddy=not original

squarepusher=original

I see what you are saying and stand corrected.

So lemme ask you something... what exactly do you use to alter these sounds?

mainly my sampler, but like i said you can do things like jack the gain up on the turntable mixer before hitting the sampler so you get a really sweet crunchiness to breaks (or any other sounds you want to sound crunchy), and you can run them through pedals or rack effects before hitting the sampler for effects, and once in the sampler you can cut them up, reverse them, filter them, morph them, all kinds of things, and then when you play them out of the sampler you can effect that signal infinately, and when you record them you can {censored} with all kinds of plug in's on them and or edit the audio in any way. there's billions of things you can do to it, that's where creativity and imagination come into play.