Thrift Store Find: USB Turntable ION TTUSB10

During the recent great two-year indoor sporting event, my wife got a really good deal on a lot of Vinyl LPs we hadn't seen before. She did some streams where friends could listen to them with us and chat. And I promised my dad I'd digitize some of them for him. But I never seemed to have both the time and the space to set up and properly ground a turntable and an amp near a computer. And then we were at Savers and they had what appeared to be a perfectly working USB turntable, only missing the platen and USB cable, for less than $20. That sounds like exactly what I needed to move the project forward. But will it actually work?

[@donavonmacallister3101]

Wow you got a dust cover on yours. Mine didn't. I'm gonna have to replace the needle on mine too. Got it for 30$ brand new except for one use.

[@michaellalwani9053]

Anywhere I can find ion in manitoba

[@ghohenzollern]

There seem to be quite a few for sale on ebay.

[@ghohenzollern]

FYI, I ended up having to use the fancier cartridge that I have. The angle of the cartridge that came with it was such that the plastic part that holds the needle was dragging along the record and picking up ghost sound from nearby grooves. My other cartridge doesn't do that, but it is too tall for the lever to lift entirely off of the disc, so I'm having to drop the needle manually. I suspect the tone arm may be slightly bent, but it may also be that I used too thick a platen, or that the slight warp in the turntable pushes the record up a little. Even so, it is quite usable and I was quickly able to digitize all the LPs my father wanted. At some point I may try bending the tone arm upwards slightly and see if everything works better then.