the Linn LP12 do you?!

I pretty much stopped buying vinyl around 1988 and started on CDs instead. There are a good bunch of albums that I gave away to good homes when I bought the CD - including What's Going On, Exile On Main St, a Howlin' Wolf collection ... and for years I listened to CDs much much more.

Then the iPod meant that pretty much everything I listened to was on headphones or on portable speakers.

I lent my record deck to my father-in-law when his deck packed in, and went 5 years without one : but I kept the vinyl, safely stored away, partly because I was too busy working to organise disposing of it at a sensible price, and partly for sentimental reasons. Then I got the house decoration moved on and cleared out space for a "study", which meant all my records and CDs and books could sit together, and I had an excuse to buy a deck.

I was knocked out by how good the £120 Pro-Ject deck I bought 2 years ago is, and firmly believe that nothing sounds as good as vinyl : even my crackly old Lonewolves singles. CDs and MP3s are magic because you can carry your music everywhere, but they lack the extra pixie dust that you get from vinyl. Not just because of the sentiment I have for sonic artefacts from when I was 12, or 15, but because it does sound better.

If you're going to split them, do what John Walters did - sell everything except "Trout Mask Replica". Otherwise keep the lot and treasure them!

This has come up before, sometimes in the form of "I sold/gave away all my vinyl and regretted it ever since" but there's a pretty much uniform view that vinyl, for all its pops and crackles, has an indefinable something that is worth hanging onto over the convenience of CD/MP3. And I entirely agree with that view; ok i am listening to an ipod right now as it is very convenient and vinyl involves a bit more maintenance, but it just sounds better. So if you actually like what's on your vinyl and its not 500 of the standard charity shop Phil Collins, Wham, Daniel O'Donnell lps, make some room and keep it. A lifetime of regret will only follow otherwise. Your lps will always be there for you - who knows if Spotify will.

Sell off the dreck (every collection has that) but keep anything and everything you have a fondness for, be it the label design or sleeve notes. You'll only regret it in later life.
My t/t was banished to the attic about 10 years ago but the ellpees sit proudly on my shelf. When friends, who did make the mistake of getting rid, come over they spend many an hour going through my 'archive', for I consider it an archive.

As a fellow LP12 owner don't. Spend a night with your albums, your Sondek and a couple of bottles of wine. Enjoy the clicks and scratches, they're memories.
Spend a few hundred and get the LP12 serviced like I did and sit back and revel in the sound.

I sold all my vinyl years ago and am now in the process of buying them all back one by one.

Why am I doing this?
Call it nostalgia, call it a midlife crisis...who knows.
Keep them.

You'll regret it.

is that the majority of my vinyl went as a result of circs beyond my control - to wit - the Great Cellar Flood of '06. I had hung on to them for largely sentimental reasons as I didn't have a deck set up to play them on. Even more weirdly, I wasn't emotionally as distraught as I expected I would be - and some good ones, rare ones, went in the Flood too.

The Light did great work on some of the less damaged items - drying out covers in a low oven or with her hairdryer. This was a touching effort and somewhat unexpected given it was because of her naggi...sorry, well reasoned argument, that they'd been consigned to the cellar in the first place.

Instead of the previous "well, it's just a bunch of old stuff and you never play them anyway" - it became, "no it's important to you, we should save as many as we can"

Farr less predictable than acts of nature, the workings of a woman's mind

Says keep them. Do you really need the space? You'll get next to nothing for second-hand run-of-the-mill records anyway.

BTW a basic LP12 service won't cost much over £100, unless you need new parts.

Mine currently reside in the spare room, the deck (an ADC 1700) is still with the rest of the stereo and in time I plan a cull of the rubbish that I really don't love, but the rest is staying, no question.

Cassettes though, that's a whole 'nother ballgame and one on which Mr Em and I have a difference of opinion. To me they're special, some have CD duplicates but some are completely irreplaceable, however, to him they are 3 boxes we don't need!

Yep, know all the arguments but
1. I was downsizing
2. They were all scratched to hell
3. You can't take it with you, things aren't important

I can still listen to them all, music isn't contained by a piece of vinyl

I'd never sell them.

I don't play them that much now and have relaced most of what I really want with cd.

But each is like a photograph.

You remember where you bought it and all the associated times around it.

I've collected vinyl since I was 10, I couldn't throw it away now.

Having sold my extensive collection of Punk vinyl in 1979 / 1980 in order to fund the growing Rock and NWOBHM collection (thanks to the late great Beano's in Croydon) I determined in around 1981 that it had been a mistake, and that I would never sell another vinyl LP or 12" single. Like many others, I stopped buying vinyl in around 1989, but have lovingly listened to many of them since, have emigrated to Australia with them, and they still reside on shelves in my study next to the old DUAL record deck.

iTunes does allow the purchase of the best of the best for generally reasonable prices which has rekindled my excitement at some great albums.

The next challenge is to buy one of the LP Converters and convert the best to digital files for storage and iPod use!

Perhaps the Word can run a feature on the current best crop of such USB Turntables and conversion software??

Mainly for space, having USBed 'em, but I was refused permission, bless her, as she knows what they mean to me. Doesn't mean I'll ever play them again, but I know where they are if I do. More detritus for my executors, as I can't be sure they will either know what to do with the brimful plastic crate of back-ups- all the vinyl rips, all the download copies, all the kept songs from coverdiscs, all the mp3 blog "assimilation purposes" songs........

when I moved from a larger house to a small gallery flat (not the sad story it must sound like). Got £400 trade-in on old hi-fi from Sevenoaks (this was a few years ago) towards one of these,
http://www.arcam.co.uk/products,solo,Music-Systems,SoloMusic.htm
most of the value was in the Sondek.

Kept my excellent Mission 770s and still haven't found speakers I'd prefer. Have an engagingly mid-80s look ...

At the same gave my classical vinyl to (edit: Amnesty, I now realise) but not my pop/rock/jazz (we are talking ~100 lps here, not the RSJ-defying collections many of the Massive clearly have). Neither my partner (has her own larger house and an Arcam/B&W/Monitor Audio/Pioneer AV system) or I have actually installed a turntable on our main systems since, but as I have a few LPs that aren't available on CD we have her old Sansui SR 222 on an amp with a pair of headphones in a room upstairs at hers. And I do pop in occasionally for a quick vinyl fix.

But the Systemdek that my dad gave me a while ago, his hearing having sadly deteriorated, still languishes in her loft-awaiting a tuneup/repair. And I couldn't tell you why I haven't got round to installing it in my flat yet, except to say that what I miss isn't the Sondek, it's i) the sound of its predecessor, a Rega Planar 2 rather like this one:
http://www.rega.co.uk/html/p2.htm
and an A60 amp in a student room in Brighton, and ii) the focus to dwell on the sound of, e.g. Laurie Anderson's "Mister Heartbreak" in the way I did then.

And didn't sell a single one. CDs go like hotcakes, but not vinyl. It's cleary not what the collectors are after.

I've got everything on CD and everyhing on download, bar a few one-off singles that don't seem to be available anywhere. I have no casettes whatsoever, no videos either.

I had a massive clearout and don't regret it at all. Of course, I've kept everything dear to me, like my 2000 singles.

Our local Car Boot Fair (Sunday mornings, Boreham, just off the A12) seems to attract LP buyers in their multitudes. Most of the good stuff is snapped up by other dealers early on, but still a good way to dispose of your less valuable stuff. Better prices than chucking them on eBay or Discogs........

Don't think Billy Bragg's take on the subject has been mentioned on the site:

I’m down but I’m not out, but Lord, I’m hurting
I’m down but I’m not out but I feel blue.

I sold all my vinyl yesterday
At a boot sale out on the highway
And now my room is full of fresh air.

I’m down but I’m not out, but Lord, I’m hurting

I’m down but I’m not out but I feel blue.

Somebody owns all my albums now
They probably don’t even wonder how
My name got written on the sleeves.

So I’m down but I’m not out, but Lord, I’m hurting
I’m down but I’m not out but I feel blue.

I opened the window, I let in the sun
My record collection has ended
For someone else it's just begun.

So I’m down but I’m not out, but Lord, I’m hurting
I’m down but I’m not out but I feel blue.

see http://pertinentverge.blogspot.com/2006/03/tears-of-my-tracks.html