turntable!

So, i landed some great vinyl. which lead me to FINALLY cop a turntable to play them on. Now that i have the table, my question is how do i go about hooking it up to the 3000? the table is a Technics SL1200MKII. i see it has two RCA plugs and a grounder(?). should i be connecting the two jacks directly into the MP phone-ins (ie. using two RCA to 1/4" headphone jack adapters)? Should I be running the turntable through a box first (ie. mixer, receiver)?

btw, i tried using search and thought i found an answer but it was lacking

dont run your turntable straight into your MPC.....you gotta send it through a mixer or a amp first.

Pick yourself out a nice good quality dj mixer (Vestax, Rane, Stanton, Technics are some good brands))and run the table through it boosting the signal and enabling you to eq the sound before you sample it.

Until you get the money to get a mixer, plug your turntable into a amp you got sitting around that excepts Video or Auxilary and run out of the headphones out of it into your MPC and record.

pz

Buy yourself a good RIAA amplifier, you should be able to get those easy, especially in stores that sells Hi-Fi turntables. That's a little box that simply amplifies and equalize the phono signal to line signal. Not everybody thinks DJ-mixers has that good sound, especially not the cheap one's, and if you don't need a DJ mixer I think you could get much better results soundwise for less money than a mixer. And it takes up less space too!

Deck daddy is on point.. if you don't need a dj mixer, just get a phono --> line converter. Unless you are going to be djing, or you have the money to drop on a Rane or Pioneer, you aren't going to see much benefit from running your sound through the mixer's eq before you sample it.

i got a old vestax pmc-06(made in Japan) that makes my vinyl sound good with its high and low eq.
But if you are not going to Dj than a phono-preamp would be good for you too...you can always wait to eq it once its in the computer.

And, if you get a mixer dont get a Pioneer mixer...thayare whack.

Rane ...or old Vestax(made in Japan) or the little RIAA amp deck daddy said

See, now you guys got me leaning towards the mixer. As I'm not a DJ in any right and i only have one table, I'm considering the mixer to at least get a handle on scratching/incorporating scratches into production. I can definitely see myself getting into scratching or at least having it available for whoever is able to. If i buy a mixer that does the job of a quality amp then i get the best of both world's (amplification & scratching). btw, why are the two interchangeable in a "turntable>MPC" setup? is there an amp in the mixer? and why would i need a box to go btwn the table and the MP anyway? is it a volume issue? (i'm asking because i dont have the rca>phone adapter plugs to test the tables through the MP to find out myself)

NOTE TO MODS: Maybe I should have posted this topic in"Getting Started" or "Studio Environments"? Feel free to move this.

It is not only amplification, it is also a special eq. If you just raise the level you will get thin sound with little bass. With a RIAA-box, you would get a clear and "right" sound from your records. Since bass-freq's take up so much space on a record, theystarted to cut away some amount of bass befor making a record of it, and made a standard -RIAA- that brings up the same amount of bass. This way they could have more minutes of audio on each of the records sides.

This is the RIAA eq. curve:


Read about RIAA here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

If the mixer is going to be used as a scratch-mixer, you just have to save up your money and get a good one. Cheap DJ-mixers has really bad built- sound- and fader-quality, and anyone who is a serious DJ owns a good DJ-mixer himself, and can bring it to a session.

Seriously, don't buy a cheap, or even mid-range mixer, it's not worth the money. And if your turntable is not a pro direct driven table, it can not be used well for scratching. A serious DJ would bring that to to a session.

Very interesting fact Deck Daddy...i did not know this and is good for me to know considering how much i love records. I'm gonna check those RIAA boxes out.

well, yeah ... i guess its either a RIAA amp box or a good quality old-skool dj mixer for you. Be careful which mixer you get. Here are a few good models...Vestax(make sure its made in Japan), or a Rane(no worries, they are all good).

Scratching and tweaking records are nice skillz for sure to go with your beat-making. If you are having thoughts about doing that than i would say go ahead and get a GOOD(quality Eq's) dj mixer(eventhough you are not a dj) and mash some sounds up with your hand to give it extra added hiphop flavor.