Turntable Reviews

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Turntable Reviews
The Audio Technica AT-LP120-USB Turntable Shames the Plastic Competition
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 22, 2014  |  52 comments
Off the audiophile pedestal and into the “real world” we go, with a review of Audio Technica’s easy to set up $250 AT-LP120-USB turntable.

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Turntable Reviews
Music Hall's MMF-11.1 Top of the Line Turntable
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 03, 2014  |  11 comments
It’s no secret that Pro-Ject builds Music Hall turntables to Music Hall’s specifications and design parameters using mostly “off the Pro-Ject shelf” mechanical components. Before getting to the 11.1, perhaps you are wondering why Pro-Ject would want to compete with itself.

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Turntable Reviews
Zorin Audio TP-S3 Turntable and PUS-12 Tone Arm By the Numbers
Michael Fremer  |  May 09, 2014  |  9 comments
Zorin Audio is a China-based company producing a series of tone arms and turntables that last year at an audio show impressed visually. The machining appeared superb and the designs sensible, but with sufficient innovation to draw my interest.

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Turntable Reviews
Rega Research RP8 Turntable Aims For Mass Extinction
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 09, 2014  |  27 comments
Rega Research sold more turntables last year than in any of its previous forty odd years and is on target to do so again this year.

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Turntable Reviews
U-Turn’s Remarkable $179 Orbit Turntable is A Crosley Killer!
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 06, 2014  |  59 comments
Investors in U-Turn’s Kickstarter-funded Orbit turntable get more than their money’s worth in this remarkably well-designed record player manufactured in Woburn, Massachusetts.

One can only imagine why the principles chose the name U-turn™, but I’d like to think it means a reversal of direction from the low resolution MP3 digital hell into which a generation or two has been led, back to high resolution vinyl heaven.

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Turntable Reviews
The Pro-Ject Xtension10 Turntable— More Than a "Lifestyle" Product!
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 25, 2014  |  14 comments
Just as moving downhill is easier than going up, scaling down an expensive design is far easier than building upon a modest one.Yet Pro-Ject, which began in1990 with a homely, grey/black Soviet-era Czech Republic-made “people’s ‘table”, has managed quite well to both upgrade its budget offerings and to produce mid-priced ‘tables of distinction.
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Turntable Reviews
Origin Live Resolution Mk3 Turntable and Illustrious Mk3C Tone Arm Still Captivates
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 05, 2013  |  12 comments
U.K. based Origin Live has been building its iconoclastic line of turntables and tone arms for decades now and though its American visibility remains relatively low, it has managed to attract a small but enthusiastic and growing consumer fan base .

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Turntable Reviews
VPI Traveler Plants American Flag on Mid-Entry Level Turntable Territory
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 10, 2013  |  39 comments
Imports crowd the $1500 turntable price-point with entries from Rega, Pro-Ject, Music Hall, Clearaudio, JA Michell, Marantz (made by Clearaudio), Acoustic Signature and some others.

Until VPI surprised the turntable world last year with the Traveler, the only American-made ‘table manufactured at this price that I can think of is the SOTA Comet, which comes with an OEM Rega tonearm.

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Turntable Reviews
Acoustic Signature Storm Mk2 Turntable Produces Clear Sonic Skies
Michael Fremer  |  Jun 17, 2013  |  10 comments
Acoustic Signature designer Gunther Frohnhöfer has been building mass loaded aluminum-based turntables for decades. Back in 2001 I reviewed and really liked a model called the Final Tool. It ended up being purchased by someone I knew and he’s still using it trouble-free all these years later and it still sounds solid.

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Turntable Reviews
The SME Model 20/3 Turntable: The Latest Variation on a Long Running Theme
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 03, 2013  |  7 comments
For a company whose initials stand for “Scale Model Equipment” the massive turntables SME builds are anything but. The company, founded in post WW II England, began as a manufacturer of scale models, then popular in the engineering trade.

SME founder Alastair Robertson-Aikman was an audio hobbyist who one day decided to apply his engineering acumen and put to work the talented designers and machinists in his employ to produce a tone arm for his own use.

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Turntable Reviews
How Low Can You Go? Pro-Ject's $299 Essential Turntable
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 30, 2012  |  9 comments
Pro-Ject's $299 Essential costs 25% less than the recently reviewed Carbon. So what don'tyou get for your minus $100?

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Turntable Reviews
Pro-Ject Produces "Carbon Copy" of Debut III That's Even Better! (CORRECTED 8/25/12)
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 21, 2012  |  36 comments
The Pro-Ject brand began as vinyl lover's pipe dream. Vienna based audio distributor Heinz Lichtennegger believed as did many of us back in the 1990s, that vinyl was not dead. It just needed a defibrillator in the form of an inexpensive, well-made and reliable turntable.

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Turntable Reviews
Legendary Gale GT 2101 Appears At My Door
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 13, 2012  |  9 comments
An Analogplanet.com reader emailed to ask if I'd like to spend a week with his Gale turntable. I knew the Gale loudspeaker from the 1970s but was unfamiliar with the turntable so I figured, "why not"?

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Turntable Reviews
The Anvil "Alloy Convertible" Turntable—Motor City Metal Machine Magic!
Michael Fremer  |  Jun 21, 2012  |  15 comments
The two basic turntable design approaches are low mass that quickly evacuates energy and high mass that sinks and damps energy. Both designs seek to avoid reflecting back into the system the considerable energy produced at the stylus/groove interface.

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Turntable ReviewsTonearm Reviews
VPI Classic 3 turntable & Classic-JMW tonearm
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 14, 2011  |  1 comments
Trends in turntable design shift back and forth over time, each "advance" turning out to be a mostly sideways move. Over its long history, VPI's founder and designer, Harry Weisfeld, has moved the analog goalposts back and forth as he's refined his thinking. His early turntables were mostly standard spring-suspension designs of normal size. By the time Weisfeld produced his fully tricked-out TNT model, which was originally designed to stably hold the heavy moving mass of Eminent Technology's ET2 air-bearing arm, he'd moved to a massive, oversized, sandwiched plinth with isolating feet at the corners. He first used springs and, later, air bladders originally designed to cushion a tractor-trailer's load, and which he'd found in a trucker's supply catalog. Via an O-ring, the TNT's outboard motor drove one of three pulleys that protruded from holes in the plinth, and attached to a T-shaped subchassis that, in turn, drove the other two pulleys via two additional O-rings.
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