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My practically free classroom turntable system

chguat

Member
I'm a high school English teacher, and it seems these days it seems I spend more time in my classroom than I do at home. This being the case, I wanted to piece together a system which would allow me to listen to all my records when I'm putting in extra hours grading and planning. Anyway, all the pieces came together in a surprisingly short amount of time, cost me practically nothing, and it now I have vinyl in my classroom. My students were especially good last week, so I even gave them a taste of Cat Stevens, and they were intrigued to see this "ancient" audio equipment at work. Here's a picture of the receiver and turntable:

IMG_0139_zpswbctcvxo.jpg


The receiver is a Technics SA-GX670 which I pulled out of a trash can - $0

The turntable is a Luxman P-100, which I found at Goodwill - $5

The speakers are not pictured because they are mounted to the wall, but they are Dayton B652's which a co-worker donated to me when he received a pair of Realistic Minimus 7's from a relative - $0

Add in the cost of speaker wire, and I'm still under 20 bucks on the whole deal.

The SA-GX670 isn't the best sounding receiver I could have found, but I can't complain about the price. I honestly didn't expect it to work, because I pulled it out of a trash can, but I took it home, hit it with a can of air, and it powered right up.

The Luxman is a surprisingly nice sounding turntable with a really heavy plinth. It groans like an old man getting out of the bath when the arm picks up, but I've read that this model tends to make those kinds of noises and it can't be helped. It came with a Signet Hi-Tec 103 cartridge, which is a strange little beast, but does the job.

I have another pair of the Dayton speakers at home, and I find them almost too directional in that they fill the space directly in front of them, but sound garbled anywhere outside the sweet spot. Maybe it's the acoustics of my classroom, and maybe it's the fact that they're wall-mounted at about ear level, but they really fill this room nicely, and don't seem overly directional in here at all. All in all, I'm very pleased with this system, and especially pleased with the price. It doesn't beat my Marantz 2265 and Pioneer PL-115D at home, but for less than 20 bucks, I'm loving this setup.

Does anybody else have a practically free setup at home? Id love to see 'em.
 
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Nice job putting your system together and now you have something new and fun to teach the class.
 
Great setup -- we used to listen to Shakespeare on record in my English class in HS ... so I figured that is what you were doing with the turntable ...NOT :)
 
I wish I had Shakespeare on vinyl, but sadly I don't. I play jazz, folk, and other easy listening stuff for my students, and save the harder rock and metal for when I'm grading their papers. ;)
 
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