Glad to say I skipped right past this phase! And these days rippin from an old LP into a digital .mp3 format is easily done with USB turntables, but the overall quality of most of the USB turntables available is pretty shitty in terms of wow and flutter control (speed control of the platter), overall tone arm weight and balancing and the quality of the needle (stylus) they come with compared to an old school quality turntable.

One of these days when I find myself with too much time on my hands I will finally get around to convertin the 150 or so of old LPs I have which I haven't been able to find in digital format but that process will definitely take some time to get done.

Fossil found and donated a great Sansui turntable to this cause on craigslist that was missing the diamond from the stylus which luckily was interchangeable with the one from my old dead Technics turntable but I no longer have an amp to interface between the turntable and computer, so I still need that piece of hardware to get it done too. He had also located an awesome old Fischer receiver on craiglist we were both droolin over till we hooked it up and found out only the tuner section still worked

Luckily I did manage to keep my old record cleaning gear over the years but just properly cleanin an LP and then de-ionizing it before you ever even let the needle (stylus) hit the LP takes a good cuppla minutes per side which will add quite a bit of time to the overall rippin/encoding process