Turntable recommendations: £300-500 (sans arm & cart)

It just depends on the implementation. The garrards with the idler wheel are technically direct drive. Belts tend to be more detailed but direct drive gives you loads of rhythm, timing and low bass.

 

Anyone reading David Price's view on the massive Trio deck in Hifi World a couple of months ago where he compared it to a Gyrodec. The gyrodec may have been more accurate but the Trio appeared to rock big time.

I think direct drives failed due to mass manufacture and cheap build when the big companies wanted us to buy their new 'perfect forever' cd players. But then I'm a cynic.

 

I say that article to, i reckon the article was spot on, the reason belt drives took off was it was easier and cheaper to manufacture a belt drive, and easier to isolate motor noise, the one caveat was that the gyro was about a quarter of the price, these trios were £1k in the early eighties, I also remember a review of the spacedek, gyro, origin live and new xerxes, with a replinthed garrard, (401 IIRC)the garrard sounded best, to them.

 

With the high price of modern day high end decks - how much would something like the Trio cost nowadays ?

I have to admit the Garrard 501, although expensive, does look wonderful in a nostalgic kind of way. The bloke I bought my LP12 off was selling due to buying a 301 and designing his own plinth for it. It was a labour of love to him and the results were very musical - not 100% sure if it was better than the lp12 though - but he also had a old SME arm from way back on it. Would have been nice to have heard it with a modern arm - even an RB250/300. However, when I queried this, he thought it would spoil the aesthetic.

I'm sure there are many 301/401 decks out there fairly cheap which you could either buy a new plinth for or if you were so inclined build your own.

 

http://www.eng.abdn.ac.uk/~eng289/401/401plnth.htm
Thats a common plinth design, works really well. Can be used for 301 too, you just need to cut the deck hole to the right shape etc.

 

Two things to say here:
1). Cheap DDs are not all that, but SP10s/Trios and HIGH END direct drives make LP12s sound sloppy... and don't require constant fettling .
2). Garrard 401 + Rega RB250 + Denon DL160/110/103 (you choose, to suit your phono stage) = the best "entry level high end" turntable set-up, bar none!
I've owned both and wouldn't want a belt drive now, even if you paid me to take it!
(And I had a few of those, too...)

 

My 2p worth
Can you find something by Townshend for your money, very nice sounding decks.
Alternatively the Nottingham sound is very appealing, very airy and full of nice mid range detail. I've heard a very nice 301, and also a god awful one. I would be tempted though by a good one, it was very persuasive.
Have you looked at the Emporium?

 

301 < > 401

anex ,
i was under the impression that the 401 has lower rumble noise as it was designed for stereo use were as the 301 was a mono era deck.
for what its worth i've not heard a good 301 (most have been bodged hobby projects ) but i have heard two very good 401's that had modern arms and carts.

i managed to get a nice loth x othello deck for under £600 with a tecnoarm recently so keep an i out for odd decks too. this is a dc motor all acrylic tiny springless sub chassis deck with oil damped bearing and 2" thick platter and it is awesome. best deck i have owned.

 

http://www.garrard501.com/faq.html

301 grease bearings are the ones to go for, utter beasts, friend of mine ran one for ages but got fed up of it being so damn big and ugly.

 

Yikes, reading that 501 link, old Garrards sound like an awfully complicated business! Ditto LP12s. I should say at this point that I'm very much a subscriber to the fit-and-forget school of hifi, and I'm not really in the mood to go reading vast reams of cryptic turntable lore before I can even begin to make an informed decision about what to buy and what it'll take to get it up and running, and to keep it up and running...

Honestly, as much as I like the VFM inherent in 2nd-hand buys, I'm seriously tempted to just plump for a brand new P5 or Pro-Ject RPM6 or Horizon SE and just be done with it! (I can also be a touch impatient and impulsive when it comes to buying toys..!)

So, unless somebody in the know can point me in the direction of a near-guaranteed good buy, I think I'll scratch Garrards and LP12s off the list... I just can't be arsed.

Dunc

 

My LP12 was serviced by a dealer 4 years ago and still sounds as good as the day I got it back.

A lot of the lore about LP12s are from the older decks - the springs they use on modern ones and which will be put in during a service take a lot longer to go out.

The 3 decks you mention there are all good buys - the P5 and Horizon in particular.

 

The Xerxes gets my vote too!

 

Dunc

I've got a Xerxes and it sounds great, but were I in your shoes I'd think of buying new [or nearly-new too]. Would you consider ex-dem turntables ?. With a friendly neighbourhood dealer you'd probably get a decent guarantee and the deck might not have had much wear.

I should think that for £500 and a bit of bargaining you'd get a great-sounding t/t. Best of luck !!

Paul

 

Seconded

 

As mentioned above, do not discount the Direct Drive Technics SP10.

Quite simply the best T/T I have ever owned. I owned various LP12's from 1977 to 2004, I have owned Oracle's and many others.

If you can find an SP10 with an original Obsidian Plinth - buy it.

I have two, one in a granite plinth, one in an acrylic plint, both out perform the LP12 in ALL areas.

Ken

 

Big mistake. LP 12s are virtually maintenance-free. I've been using them since 1985, and I've had none of the popular forum problems at all. Set-up, level, and away you go.

Still, it's your money.

 

James, it's not so much the spectre of maintenance and fiddling - it's more the difficulty in determining whether a given LP12 up for sale somewhere is a good buy or dud. It just seems to me like you have to have trawled hundreds of enthusiast websites and done lots of reading just to make an informed decision... and I'm just not up for that. Like I said though, if someone in the know were to confirm a particular deck was worth a punt, and was able to tell me the caveats, I would certainly consider it.

Dunc

 

It might be worth phoning round various dealerships to see whether they have any LP12 trade-ins. There isn't much to 'go wrong' on an LP12, the most critical thing is probably the bearing, and you can check that quite easily by removing the sub-platter and looking at the spindle, and also by watching the platter as it rotates.

Even better, get a spirit level which fits over the spindle (Mana, and others make them) and watch the bubble as the platter rotates.

Even if the bearing is shot, a brand-new replacement (Cirkus) bearing is relatively cheap. There's virtually nothing else to break on an LP12, given that you already have a compatible (and presumably OK) arm.

I do have to laugh when people say "such-and-such beats the LP12". As you know, the LP12 can be upgraded into very rarified territory, but these people never comment on the spec of this supposedly-beaten LP12...

 

Devil,

Couldn't agree more with you. A well setup LP12 is just fun to listen to - which is the whole point.

As for all this LP12 mythology - when it's 3:00 a.m. in the morning and you are still listening (and enjoying) who cares about all these 'setup' problems.

 

The LP12 I heard beaten was an unmodded version with a Basik LVX arm, comparable in price to the Roksan Xerxes with RB300 arm it was A/B'ed with.