Cheap Starter System

[JAW]

Here's one to ponder over a cup of coffee. A nephew of mine is leaving home and all it's comforts, so I offered to take him to Power City to help him get a stereo for his apartment (you daren't call it a flat these days!). Anyway, it was pretty obvious that the selection there had more lights than watts, so I offered to assemble him a starter system. My first system back in the seventies cost about two hundred and fifty pounds, so I decided that two hundred and fifty Euros would give me a challenge and hopefully give him a system that he can improve as funds allow. The only compromise that he had to make was that there would be no remote control with the amp.
So, to date I've got a pair of JPW Mini Monitors, which I got for next to nothing and today I bought an A&R A60 amp from David Mc on the forum, so I'm left with about 130 Euros to get him a cd player, which I don't think should pose too much of a problem, and it will hopefully sound 100 times more musical than the Power City offerings.
Here's the poser - how good of a system do you think you could get for two hundred and fifty Euros?

BTW, my own system two hundred and fifty pound system, all secondhand, was a Thorens TD150 turntable with Thorens arm and (I think) Audio Technica V Series Cartridge, JVC JAS33G Amp and Tangent TM1 Speakers.

[Fran]

Theres a guy with a marantz CD63 on adverts at the mo for 100euro - you could probably beat him down to 75.

Fran

[DancingPriest]

I'm left with about 130 Euros to get him a cd player

If he's pretty young, I assume he is. Would you not be better off investing that €130 in a USB DAC?
I'm not trying to encourage piracy here, but in all probability most of his music is probably in MP3 sitting on a hard drive. With a DAC He'll be able to play back his existing library through a good source (It really does make a difference on all but the lowest bitrates). When he buys a CD He'll be able to play it on his laptop through a good DAC or better yet, get into the habit of making a lossless backup of any CD he buys.
€130 gives you a lot of options for entry level DACs these days.
As for €250 for a system? I'll be back......

[JAW]

but in all probability most of his music is probably in MP3 sitting on a hard drive

I take your point, D.P., but in fairness to him he does buy cd's, and appreciates the difference. At the moment he's backed up his cd collection to his computer and listens to them through a pair of active speakers he bought from Thomann. He specifically wants to be able to play his cd's, so maybe I'll run into Cloney's and see if they've anything that they're sick of seeing around the place.

[DancingPriest]

In fairness to him he does buy cd's, and appreciates the difference.

Sounds like a good lad!
Fair play to you for helping him out, I wish I had somebody in real life to show me the ropes back when I was starting out!
With a DAC he could always listen to his CDs from the disk drive of his laptop, to start off...
Then a possible upgrade would be to buy a dedicated transport. My Beresford has 2 coax inputs, an optical and a USB.
Another thing you get with quite a few DACs is a half decent headphone amp. I don't know about other DACs but with mine the op amps are just plug and play so you can switch a new one in if you want a change for €5-10 euro!

Anyway, my college (first) system was a Marantz CD47, a Dual CS 505-3 with an Ortofon om10 cart. They fed into a Mission Cyrus One which drove a pair of Wharfedale Linton 2 speakers. I thought it was the dogs bollocks and I'd never become one of those audiophools.....[sigh]

[JAW]

Yeah, that seems a good route to follow. I'll check out what's out there. Re your first stereo - welcome to the club, we all get suckered in some way!!! :-)

[Ivor]

. I thought it was the dogs bollocks and I'd never become one of those audiophools.....[sigh]

We really must get those Tir Na HiFi T shirts printed Fran ;)