Pickups and needles for turntables. A newer pickup or needle can improve the sound quality and reduce the wear on the LPs. Carefully check what fits your turntable and choose if you need a complete pickup or just the needle. If you are a DJ and do so-called scratching, there are special variants for that. Elliptical needles are better at picking up details from the disc grooves, spherical needles are gentler on the disc.