What does it take to play a 78rpm record properly?

A rose thorn or a pared down toothpick, the former sounds better, but you need a fresh thorn for each 78, so you best buy the wife a bunch of roses.

Read on, before concluding I'm a nutter.

Before the advent of the 33/45 most cartridges used either replaceable steel or wooden needles, which simply attached to the cartridge with a thumbscrew.

In the early years of 33/45's - nearly all decks came equipped with a dual purpose cartridge - one side playing 33/45s and the flip doing the 78's. Like all the best compromises it did neither job particularly well, and the 78's suffered worse.

You've had really good advice on this thread about getting a good, modern 33/45 turntable. You will need a pre-amp to feed it to most sound cards, unless, by fluke, your mic input does the job - do you not have a hi-fi amp that you could use for this purpose, until recently most had a variety of turntable input options? If not, I know that you can get a perfectly usable pre-amp in the UK for about the equivalent of $75.

Beware of cheapo turntables with a built in pre-amp to plug into a music centre, it's worth getting the full, heavy platter.

My advice is not to try to look for one that also does 78's. You can, no doubt, find an old 78 deck from the 30's/40's in a jumble/car boot/garage sale. Mine is from a pre-war (2nd World) radiogram and feeds accurately into a line input. It took some trouble to get working, but succeeding was rewarding and it's a talking point for guests.

When I first got it, I was lamenting at a family get together that I couldn't get the needles; my grandmother perked up and said that when she was in her teens in the 20's, she couldn't afford the needles and took thorns out of the garden bushes to play records. They really are the best sounding option.