I have just bought my self a single Technics 1210 Mk II turntable.
I am looking to use this deck to record my vinyl onto my HDD and potentially in the future, mix with another deck.
According to the seller,“It has a stanton 500 AL cartrige and stylus. the stylus though working has seen use, so to protect your records would suggest you replace it.”
I am a complete newbie to turntables.
So my question to you is: What stylus/cartridge should I purchase for someone that is going to be using it to record vinyl and mixing between records?
I do not scratch!
Please bear in mind that I am a newbie to turntables. I have looked through the other threads on the forum regarding cartridges and when I read oftcom, concords, tracking etc being discussed, it just makes no sense to me.
get a different cart for djing than for digitizing vinyl. for DJing, you need a robust stylus that doesn’t skip and withstands abuse such as back-cueing. for digitizing, you want a cart that’s optimized for getting the best audio quality out of the record. a (hifi) cart used for digitizing vinyl doesn’t need to be as robust as a DJ cart.
if you budget doesn’t allow for two carts, get a DJ cart with elliptical stylus. if your budget does allow for two carts, get maybe a shure m44-7 or ortofon concorde dj s (or e) for DJing and a ortofon 2M red, audio-technica AT440m, or shure m97xe for digitizing vinyl. my hifi cart suggestions are kinda in the $100 range. but note that even a cheaper hifi cart such as the audio-technica at95e will outperform DJ carts (even expensive ones) audio-quality wise.
the stanton 500 al ii was an well-respected, durable DJ cart during its time. it was designed for ruggedness and it was pretty loud. none of that matters for the purpose of digitizing vinyl. the 500 al ii with its spherical stylus cannot compete with the at95e when it comes to audio fidelity. my 2c.
yeah the AT cart will definitely be better than the Stanton for digitizing vinyl - you made the right choice. No slight on the 500AL - it’s a workhorse with a great price; perfect for budget DJ use. I first learned to scratch on 500ALs; they can take the roughhousing and they can cut through dust and still sound decent. But the AT makes more sense from a sound quality perspective if you’re digitizing music and not really scratching or mixing.
Since you have the 500AL already installed on it you can compare them yourself side by side and see which you like better.
Funnily enough just bought the M44G to replace the AT cart mentioned above which was unfortunately faulty. They both have similar freq response however I found the M44G gave me more volume headroom for recording because it’s a club cart and therefore ‘louder’.