Black beauties TURNTABLES £500-£995

The vinyl LP record goes from strength to strength and with it there’s a whole new wave of turntables to spin it on. Nick Tate samples six of the best affordable designs

- Nick Tate

THEY TRIED TO kill it, but it wouldn’t die – and now it looks like it’s going to outlast the format that was sent to despatch it. The microgroove LP record – or vinyl to its friends – just keeps on spinning. Amazingly, it has transcended the generation gap and many young people are buying it because they want a ‘physical copy’ of their music. Meanwhile, poor old CD falls by the wayside.

Of course, many vinyl is as are men of a certain age – perhaps fifty-somethings who never sold their record collections when everyone was telling them to, back in the Eighties. But there are lots of relative newcomers to the format too – either total newbies or those going ‘back to black’ after decades. It is such people at whom these affordable options are aimed.

What an interesting group it is! We have three distinct sorts of decks here; modern, high-tech, all-singing and dancing designs, and also purist, old-school types – plus a couple that try to play both roles, at least in part.