Four Turntables For Your Vintage Vinyl Side

1. Pro-Ject PerspeX
Keep plenty of Windex on hand if you bring home this hi-fi masterpiece—you’ll need it to keep your friends’ smooch marks off its crystal-clear acrylic plinth and carbon-fiber tone arm. But who needs friends when you can jam to minimal tech-house while pondering this platter’s Corian subchassis, gold-plated RCA sockets, and skip-stopping, Sorbothane-damped cones?
$1,999, project-audio.com


2. Music Hall MMF 2.2
Despite the sharp angles and high-gloss finish (it’s also available in Ferrari red), Music Hall’s belt-drive machine will help maintain an unpretentious vibe even if you’re the snootiest vinyl snob on the block. The deck has a zero-tolerance policy on nonsense: You get a solid platter, a rigid tone arm, and not much more. It’s about the music. Hey, put on “Mr. Bojangles” again, will ya? Gets us every time.
$450, musichallaudio.com  


3. Vestax Güber
With precision-cut enameled metal and a clear acrylic platter, this oddball deck might lead you to think Vestax placed form over function. But its robust underpinnings are sur­prisingly similar to the classic Technics 1200 DJ deck; it’s got a high-torque motor, a robust tone arm, and +/- 10 pitch control. All you need is two of these, a microphone, and a Scientologist membership card.
$499, vestax.com


4. Numark TTi
This magic machine takes big records and makes them little. Like, iPod little, man. Numark makes the only turntables on the market that suck music directly from a record platter straight to an iPod without a computer anywhere in sight. Dust off Dad’s LPs from his stoner days and digitize ’em: Reduce the hisses and pops with included software and take those wax tracks to go.
$300, numark.com