My great uncle recently passed away and I inherited eight boxes of records. I still haven't opened them to go through them, although I believe they're mostly 33rpm LPs. I need to buy a turntable suitable for hooking up to my computer (via an offboard USB soundcard), so I can play them in and digitize them.

Questions for the group:

- Any recommendations on record players? Portability doesn't matter. I have a cheapo Radio Shack mixer which can (I think) deal with the lower line level put out by record players, although it seems you can buy 'pre-amps' for around $100 . Mainly, I want to spend enough money to get something that works but I don't want to get into esoteric audiophile crud.

- I may also have an opportunity to pick up a bunch of old 78's. Never mind that most record players can't spin that fast. Assuming I could hack the gearing to make it go faster, would I need a new cartridge and/or needle as well? What does it take to play a 78rpm record properly?

I've been digging around the net. The audiophile crowd will happily charge you multiple thousands of dollars for turntables. This seems to get you a belt-drive mechanism. It seems that common features among audiophile players are very heavy platters combined with some kind of locking mechanism to hold the record down and maybe even compensate for record warping. It's unclear whether you get support for 78's, although Shure seems to make a cartridge specifically for 78rpm records that you could (maybe?) put on any record player. Poking around on eBay, I've found a number of 1970's-era players that support 78rpm play, although I'm suspicious of how much work I'd have to do to restore one of these things.

Pro DJ gear, on the other hand, tends to have direct drive rather than belt-drive motors. "Expensive" means $300, which tends to get you 78rpm support from some vendors. These vendors seem to like emphasizing how fast they can stop and restart the motor. Nice, but not interesting to me. Denon and Stanton even toss in a digitizer and give you S/PDIF digital output right from the record player. Heaven only knows if it's got decent quality A/D conversion and if it works with the huge variety of cartridges out there, but it could make life a lot easier for me when my goal is to get bits into the computer to burn out to CDs.

If I really do go the used eBay route, part of me is tempted to get an old "transcription" player that can deal with the larger disks used in studios for recording session "safeties" as well as radio transcriptions (assuming I can ever find such disks). Here are some relevant eBay auctions: a Garrard, a monstrous Fairchild, a BSR, a Metzner Starlight, or another monster RCA. I think the Metzner looks new enough that you could probably put a new stylus on it. But, I'm nervous since I don't know squat about the guts of record players.

Also, for what it's worth, here's an audiophile-biased FAQ which ain't bad at all.

Thoughts? Experience? War stories?