It Works! It Works! It Works!
I will not and actually cannot improve on the other reviews for this turntable. Right now Led Zeppelin I is playing as I type this and it sounds magnificent. My comments, after two days, are as follows:
1. The hum, I don't have one. Perhaps the most important problem that was identified in the reviews, I was prepared to rig up a ground wire but it was not necessary.
2. The power supply. Turned on just fine. However, I made sure that the connection to the the turntable was firm, give the plug a good push and you will feel it seat itself.
3. The on/off button. Yup, it's funky, but it turns on and off just fine.
4. The audio cables. Too short as noted, had to buy a pair of RCA couplers to connect to my receiver at an additional cost of 10$ for the gold plated variety. I actually would have preferred that AT just provide the ports and I would be pleased to supply my own cables.
5. The cartridge. I am not an audiophile and...
Indeed a New Era.......
So, what do you do when you want to get current with a new turntable
and you find the field swollen with overpriced gear and on the other
side, cheap Junk??
You shoot for a Technics SL1200....at least that's what I thought..
Sorry, but at $7+ bills-for a guy who never
spent over $170 for a turntable back in the day they were King, not going
for that. So what we have here with the Audio Technica AT LP120 USB
to be realistic, is a chinese knockoff of theFamous Technics Table.
So I bought one!
The bad first: On my unit, the finish on the top
of the turntable at three spots shows signs of the 'finish paint' not being
properly sprayed. In another words, it looks like someone took a pencil
eraser and went back and forth a few hundred times over the top finish
and wore out the finish coating. Ok,not good but something I could live
with cause it's not that bad, but, it doesnt make it look splendidly new either!
Do I...
A real turntable that also does USB
Overall I'm fairly satisfied with this turntable. It has a nice strong motor, a decent solid metal platter, and an okay factory cartridge. I say Okay because AT makes much better cartridges (like the AT95 series, that are still fairly inexpensive) than the one that comes on this thing and for this kind of spend, it wouldn't have killed them to throw one in. Plus the included cartridge tracks at "3-5" grams. That's a viciously high tracking force. I have an AT95HE that I mangled the needle on...once I replace the needle, I plan to swap it in. Hey, at least it really includes a magnetic cartridge and not the typical crap ceramic cartridge that the vast majority of these USB turntables come with, and at least it's a standard mount so you can swap it for something better, which you also can't do on most of those crappy tables. This is one of the few USB turntables out there that actually let you adjust tracking force and antiskate at all.
One other nice feature is that...
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