Turntable Reviews

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Turntable ReviewsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Linn Sondek LP12 turntable & Klyde phono cartridge
Corey Greenberg  |  Jun 01, 2010  |  First Published: Dec 01, 1993  | 
If you asked me to name a single specific high-end audio component that could make or break a system, I'd name the Linn LP12 turntable. Of all the thousands of hi-fi products I've heard over the years, not a one of 'em—not a speaker, amplifier, or digital processor—has been able to draw me into the music, no matter what the associated componentry, like the LP12. I've heard the most highly regarded speakers/amps/processors fall flat in certain situations due to a lack of synergy with their surrounding systems, but I've never heard an LP12-based system that didn't put a smile on my face and make me green with envy.
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Turntable Reviews
Linn Sondek LP12 turntable with Lingo power supply
John Atkinson  |  Jan 10, 1995  |  First Published: Jan 10, 1991  | 
What did you on your wedding night? I know what I did. All three times. But Casey McKee? He spent his wedding night at the end of October installing the new Lingo power supply on his Linn LP12. I know. I was there.
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Art Dudley ListeningTurntable Reviews
Listening #106
Art Dudley  |  Oct 14, 2011  | 
In 2010, sales of motorcycles equipped with sidecars accounted for only 4% of total motorcycle sales in the US. But that was a significant increase over 2009, which was itself an increase over 2008. While numbers remain low overall, sales of sidecar motorcycles are going up at a decent rate, while sales of most other motorcycles are in the toilet.
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Art Dudley ListeningTurntable ReviewsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Listening #108
Art Dudley  |  Dec 15, 2011  | 
I set out on a fishing trip but returned less than an hour later, empty-handed. You asked me, reasonably enough, "What happened?"

"I spent a half-hour digging in the garden for worms, but couldn't find any."

"You could have driven to Mr. Zetterstrum's farm, knocked on his door, asked his permission, and spent a few hours overturning the cowflops in his pasture. I'm sure you would have found one or two worms that way."

"You're right. I guess I didn't want to go fishing that badly."

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Art Dudley ListeningTurntable Reviews
Listening #140
Art Dudley  |  Jul 30, 2014  | 
Has it really been 30 years since an engineer named William H. Firebaugh unleashed on the audio world his radical and decidedly affordable Well Tempered Arm? (footnote 1) Indeed it has—and today, at 82, Bill Firebaugh seems busier than ever, with so many irons in the fire that he's been forced to give up the noble game of golf—an irony, as you'll see in a moment.
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Art Dudley ListeningTurntable Reviews
Listening #175: Soulines Kubrick DCX turntable
Art Dudley  |  Jun 27, 2017  | 
Sometimes I feign interest in living in the Soviet Union of the 1950s and '60s. This happens mostly when I'm shopping for toothpaste at my local supermarket, where the toothpaste aisle is as long as a football field. "I don't want so many choices," I say in my Abe Simpson voice, "because all these choices are stupid. I wish I lived in the USSR: Shopping for toothpaste wouldn't take so long." But I'm only kidding.
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Art Dudley ListeningTurntable Reviews
Listening #204: the New Garrard 301
Art Dudley  |  Nov 20, 2019  | 
Some loss of innocence is expected with both age and experience. Because I tick both boxes, and in spite of my best efforts to the contrary, I'm often a bit blasé in the face of new review samples. I wasn't with this one.

A brief recap: At the 2018 High End show in Munich, UK-based SME announced that they had taken steps to reintroduce the classic Garrard 301, a transcription turntable that's been out of production for more than half a century. At the time of its introduction—production began in 1953—success for the British-built 301 was instant. It was also enduring; it stayed in production through 1965.

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Art Dudley ListeningTurntable Reviews
Listening #40
Art Dudley  |  Apr 30, 2006  | 
Not only is it possible for a thinking person to now and then drastically change his point of view, if for no other reason than the sake of change—if one wishes to prevent self-seriousness and various other forms of mental decay, it's probably an outright must. So it was that I recently began to wonder if everything I know about record players might be wrong.
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Art Dudley ListeningBudget Component ReviewsTurntable Reviews
Listening #47
Art Dudley  |  Nov 19, 2006  | 
"Hail, mortal!"
—Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania, reacting to Kevin Kline as Bottom, when he succeeds in operating a phonograph
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Art Dudley ListeningTurntable Reviews
Listening #48
Art Dudley  |  Dec 24, 2006  | 
People love it when audio reviewers reach for that highest of all compliments: "I enjoyed the thing so much, I decided to keep it" (footnote 1). Manufacturers love it for obvious reasons. Readers love it because nuance is out of style at the moment, and the ambiguities implied by less decisive conclusions can be frustrating to adults who read with their mouths open. Publishers love it because strong, declarative statements have been scientifically proven, in double-blind reading tests, to attract subscribers.
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Art Dudley ListeningTurntable Reviews
Listening #49
Art Dudley  |  Jan 21, 2007  | 
Here's something that's difficult to visualize but nonetheless true: If you attempt to isolate from their environment the working bits of a record player—the main bearing, platter, tonearm, and cartridge—by means of an elastic drive belt and a suspended subchassis of the usual sort, you'll create almost as many problems as you solve.
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Art Dudley ListeningTurntable Reviews
Listening #65
Art Dudley  |  May 31, 2008  | 
The Oakland fluker said, "You mean we should lug our Connie Companion layout all that way? It's too heavy and something might happen to it."
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Art Dudley ListeningTurntable Reviews
Listening #75
Art Dudley  |  Mar 20, 2009  | 
During a century of development of the phonograph, dozens of different things have been considered crucial to its performance: lack of bearing noise, lack of motor noise, freedom from runout error in the platter, high moment of inertia in same, immunity to all manner of unwanted vibration, and so forth. But now I wonder if the most important factor of all hasn't been overlooked, or at least misunderestimated, throughout much of that time: Could it be that motor torque is more critical than any of us imagined?
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Turntable Reviews
Luxman PD-151 MARK II Record Player
Michael Trei  |  Feb 24, 2023  | 
Luxman occupies an unusual place in the hi-fi world. While many of the brands chasing ultimate performance will battle it out in the bleeding-edge design stakes, Luxman makes what I like to call luxury equipment. Everything they produce is beautiful, not just to the ear, but also to the eye and hand. Their design aesthetic keeps one foot firmly planted in the style of classic audio equipment from decades past—for example, many of their amplifiers have tone controls and big power meters, features reminiscent of topflight gear from 40 years ago—while the other foot is up to date with the latest technology...

The PD-151 MkII record player ($5695) is an excellent example.

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Turntable Reviews
Luxman PD-171 record player
Art Dudley  |  Oct 31, 2013  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2013  | 
Much ink has been spilled, and rightly so, on the topic of the LP's recent and apparently durable resurrection as a playback medium. The corpse may not be quite as lively after death as before, but it is nonetheless arguably more Lazarus than Lavoisier (the latter having managed nothing more than to wink at the crowd following his time on the guillotine—as he boasted, in life, that he would do).
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