Turntable Reviews

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Turntable Reviews
Technics SL-1200GR2 Direct Drive Turntable
Ken Micallef  |  Jan 24, 2024

Introduced in 1979, the Technics’ SL-1200MK2 turntable soon became both the company’s standard bearer and the DJ’s vinyl spinner of choice. The 1200 went through endless iterations, entering the home and studio — and, in its latter variations, the 1200 also became a turntable audiophiles could love. Fast forward to today, where we now have the Technics SL-1200GR2 direct drive turntable, a quite formidable new entry in this venerable series. Read Ken Micallef’s review to see if the GR2 delivers the goods in terms of resolution, speed, textural information, and spaciousness. . .

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Turntable Reviews
The Anvil "Alloy Convertible" Turntable—Motor City Metal Machine Magic!
Michael Fremer  |  Jun 21, 2012
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 Reviews
The Audio Technica AT-LP120-USB Turntable Shames the Plastic Competition
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 22, 2014
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
The EAT B-Sharp Is An Attractive, Well-Performing Plug'n'Play Turntable
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 08, 2018
The European Audio Team’s entry into the under $2000 turntable market includes for $1595 a factory-installed Ortofon 2M Blue moving magnet phono cartridge that alone costs around $240. Something like the $100 2M Red is more often found packaged at this price point.

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Turntable Reviews
The Fluance RT81 High Fidelity Vinyl Turntable Record Player
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 26, 2016
Canada-based Fluance is an eighteen year old loudspeaker manufacturer specializing in home theater systems. The company’s speakers have a luxurious look that belies their reasonable prices.

I’ve not heard any of them but the reviews are positive in sister publications Sound & Vision and Innerfidelity.

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Turntable Reviews
The George-Warren Turntable—Well-Made, Sensibly Engineered, Elegant-Looking
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 09, 2015
Souix-Falls, South Dakota based George-Warren Precision Sound manufactures and sells direct but one model turntable. After spending a few months with it, I’d say one is enough.

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Tonearm ReviewsTurntable Reviews
The Pear Audio Blue Robin Hood SE Turntable and Coronet 1 Tone Arm (Speed Issue Explained)
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 24, 2017
Editor's note: AnalogPlanet (and Stereophile) policy is to review products as sent to us unless they are broken and/or clearly defective. In this case the speed was "off" but the 'table was neither "broken" nor "defective" so we chose to review "as sent".

The importer wrote to say the unit was sent with "the wrong pulley" and as stated in the review, we allowed for the possibility that the 'table had been previously used for reviews or for some other purpose. However, without trying to sound too harsh, if you're going to send out a product for review, it's important to check out its functioning before shipping and that would include making sure it's running at the right speed.

As the importer points out, the Kid Thomas previously reviewed ran at the correct speed but clearly this one did not and it was what was sent so there was an obligation to review "as sent" just as there was an obligation to ship a properly functioning review sample! I know this might sound "harsh" but I'm always thinking of the consumer who buys and uses without checking speed accuracy and ends up listening at the wrong speed.

AnalogPlanet readers' thoughts on this are most welcome.

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Turntable Reviews
The Pro-Ject Classic SB Superpack Turntable: “Brains” and Good Looks Too
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 29, 2017
It’s doubtful Pro-Ject could have produced a high performance, feature packed, beautiful to look at turntable like the Classic SB Superpack and priced it so reasonably ($1499 including $449 Blue Point No. 2 cartridge) were it not for surging turntable sales and Pro-Ject’s place at the top of the high performance turntable market (“high performance” meaning not counting the plastic mass market cheapies).

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Turntable Reviews
The Pro-Ject Xtension10 Turntable— More Than a "Lifestyle" Product!
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 25, 2014
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
The Schiit SOL Turntable (Updated 10/26/2020)
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 22, 2020
(Schiit just announced it is producing a new pulley that will run the turntable at the correct speed and will send them free to all existing customers.)Executive decision: no Schiit jokes, ok? Especially since the Sol turntable is so well conceived, designed, executed, made in America and remarkably priced at $799 including a $119 Audio Technica AT-VM95EN cartridge.

That said, if you want an “open the box, plug and play” type turntable, the SOL might not be for you. On the other hand, if you buy one with the cartridge already installed, Schiit makes the Sol reasonably easy to set up.

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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
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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Tonearm ReviewsTurntable Reviews
The Technics SL-1200G Direct Drive Turntable
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 24, 2017
The original Technics SL-1200 direct drive turntable introduced in 1972 enjoyed a thirty-eight year, six generation run. Technics sold more than 3.5 million of them. In October of 2010 just as vinyl was staging its unlikely comeback, parent company Panasonic pulled the plug on the SL-1200 Mk6.

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Turntable Reviews
The Thorens TD 1500 Turntable Is a Belt-Driven, Suspended Subchassis Marvel
Ken Micallef  |  Sep 28, 2022

Thorens has a longstanding history of turntable excellence. Does the company’s new TD 1500 ’table continue to uphold that mantle? Read Ken Micallef’s review to find out if the belt-driven, suspended subchassis TD 1500 is up to spec. . .

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Turntable Reviews
The Thorens TD402 DD Direct Drive Semi-Automatic Turntable
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 20, 2019
Hermann Thorens founded his company in 1883 to manufacture music boxes in Switzerland. Cylinder-based phonograph manufacturing began around the turn of the century. In 1956 the company introduced the TD-124—the company’s first high performance turntable and one that among collectors is still in demand. The company moved to Germany in 1966 and merged with EMT. The classic TD-125 followed in 1968.

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Turntable Reviews
Thorens TD 1601 Turntable—It Might As Well Be Sprung
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 15, 2020
Back in 1972 the original Thorens introduced the TD 160, a triple spring-suspended sub-chassis design that quickly became a long-in-production classic and the blueprint from which many other turntables, er, sprung—Linn for instance.

The original AR XA turntable designed by Edgar Villchur and introduced way back in 1961 for $58 was, to the best of my knowledge, the first to place the platter assembly and tone arm on the same sub-chassis isolated by a three point spring mount from the rest of the turntable (and from the outside world).

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