Perfect For Novices - A Great Deal For Others

Let me start by saying I had my doubts when I read reviews of this product. Apparently however, they didn't know what they were talking about. This turntable is perfect in nearly every way. It does have drawbacks, which I'll get to in a moment. My old turntable was awful: the right channel was lower, too much bass, not enough treble, had vibrations through stylus when a song was bass-heavy, skipped all over, and sometimes took forever to start playing at the right speed. This turntable eliminated every single one of my problems! The sound from the very first song was amazing and total CD quality. The counter measure and anti-skating controls on the system work fantastically, and there are hardly any skips at all. For the skips that do occur, they are caused by imperfections of the record. Features include a "target light" to help you place the stylus in low-level lighting situations, height adjustment, a forward and reverse feature, pitch control with quartz lock, and a strobe light that shines on the "bumps" on the platter that tells you if the platter speed is accurate or not. Also it's a direct drive turntable! Another feature included is the 78 RPM speed. Putting it all together wasn't complicated and would be easy for anyone. The platter assembly was extremely easy: you just set it down where the spindle comes through the hole in the middle. That's it! The stylus is put at the end of the tone arm, and a screw is turned counterclockwise to secure it. The dust cover was on in a minute. Probably the best feature is the ease of transferring your records to the computer. It's USB friendly. It's so friendly that you plug up the USB cord to the turntable, to the computer, adjust the volume settings, and hit record on your program of choice. It does come with free Audacity for this purpose if you're not familiar with recording yet. The major drawback for this unit is the RCA *male* outputs on the back. At first, I thought I would have to buy a female adapter if I wanted to use this method to transfer songs to the computer, but it does come with other cords that you can hook up to it to make it adaptable. Another problem one can run into is the stylus that comes with this player (AT 95E). Don't get me wrong. Even though it might be recommended to update the stylus later to a better quality one, if you're playing 33 or 45 RPM vinyl, this one works just fine. However, it's not for use with 78 RPM records. Some may think this player isn't good because it's not automatic. If that's what you want, then this player wouldn't be for you. However, the sound quality makes up for that 1000% in my opinion. This would make a perfect player for novices or someone who just wants to revisit some old times. It's perfect for me too. I'm in the process of transferring several hundred records. I'm more than halfway done. No problems yet!Read full review

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