Father's Day Gift Guide: Geeky Patriarch Edition

1. Audio-Technica LP240 Turntable

Need to buy a gift for your technophile of a dad before Sunday? We have 13 top-notch recommendations to satisfy that special someone's inner geek.

A word of caution: Do not consider this gift for your father unless he has a collection of vinyl at least three feet across, scoffs at the stereo equipment on offer at Best Buy, wishes he could find copies of some of his favorite records at iTunes but they just don’t exist anymore, and has taught you everything you know about music. If he meets all four criteria, this turntable might be right for him. And at the end of the day, he’ll know you’re surely his offspring, for who else could know him this well?

It’s fancy. It’s pretty. It’s heavy. It takes nearly an hour to set up, even if you sort of know what you’re doing. It doesn’t come with a cartridge. And, it’s plenty modern. This is one of the highest-quality USB turntables we’ve encountered, and it has a built-in component that means it will work even with receivers that don’t have a dedicated “phonograph” port (normally you have to buy a separate pre-amp to get your fancy record player to work with your modern stereo, or you clung to your vintage receiver like it was the last one on earth). If Dad is the audiophile that you think he is, he might still be continuing to scoff at this platter with pre-amp included; this “USB” turntable….until you get it working and play him one of his favorite 33, 45 or 78 RPM records. We think he’ll stop his yammering and take a seat in his sweet spot on the couch.

As for the USB part—that’s easy. Audio-Technica includes audio editing tool Audacity in the box. You can teach Dad about lossless file formats, or you can keep it quick and dirty with MP3 files.