Audio-Technica AT-PL120 Professional Direct-Drive Turntable

I'm very delighted with this purchase. It's almost disorienting to see something made so well these days. Nothing about this unit seems cheaply made. I assembled it in a flash and wow, what a thrill to hear some of my old LP's again!

As others note, this product is aimed at two quite-differnt markets: home users like myself and DJ's on a budget. This strategy is clear from the features. For example, the unit has a high-quality hinged dust cover but also a forward-reverse button.

There are surprisingly few tradeoffs for either type of user. As other reviews have mentioned, the cartridge has a fairly heavy tracking force for the stereophile. But as earlier reviews note, there are alternatives readily available on the market.

Oh, one useful thing missing that I was accustomed to with my old Dual turntable - a bubble level for leveling the machine. The turntable's feet can be leveled, but unless I overlooked it, you'll need your own bubble level.

Otherwise, this is just a fine, fine machine. I bought it partly to convert my records to electronic format. But heck, now that I've heard the results, I intend to play my records over and over and over. I strongly recommend this turntable.

I got rid of my old Dual turntable and most of my albums many years ago, but recently found a 30 of my old albums and some 78s my folks had.
I got this turntable because of it's preamp and 78 speed.
It's just great. Easy to set up and adjust.
I was blown away at how good the records sound.
I hadn't played one in years. No hum and a nice full sound you don't get from CDs. Even the old scratched 78s sound pretty good!

The next step is to rip the old 78s to CD for my folks. I haven't tried it yet.

I'm very pleased so far. I had read some negative stuff here, none, of which seems to be true of the one I have. No hum, easy to adjust. I just set everything at 2.5 grams. I left the cover on the stylus until I achieved balance, despite what the instructions said to do. Too much chance to damage the stylus until you get the arm balanced. Just take your time on tone arm balance step, set the weight carefully per the instructions to 2.5g and the anti-skate adjustment to the same.

I'd highly recommend it to someone who wants something better than one the bottom of the line turntables.

(mine is a refurb but works perfect and I saved a bunch)
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Addendum 6/16/2008
I just recorded my first LP to my laptop using Spin It Again 2.1.
Unbelievably easy with excellent results. Playing the CD sounds as good as the record, no hum, no clicks, no pops. You cannot tell it's off an LP.
I used some RCA to RCA coupling adapters I had, and a short RCA to 3.5mm mini plug cable.

I'm still using 2.5g for the weight and antiskate even though I noticed that the paper turntable lable said to use 3.5g. It works great so I can't see why to use more weight at the stylus.

I highly recommend leaving the cover over the stylus when balancing the arm and turning off anti-skate until you have it balanced. Use a light touch on the rubber grip rings at the rear of the weight when setting balance and tracking force.

A well built,3 speed, manual turnable with preamp and dust cover!. Sturdy unit, not like the paper thin plastic ones you see around that also play back with a lot of wow and flutter!!.It looks great and sounds great plugged right into my Creative Audigy Soundcard for LP transfers to CD.Some people have mentioned this turntable humming but I have NOT experienced ANY humming. Mine is really nice and quiet. Maybe they have another issue, ground problems etc, don't know.The stylus it comes with sounds fine but you should buy a Shure M78 for playing 78's on it. I did and bought a Stanton headshell to easily swap it out when playing 78's.I bought it from Electronics Expo through Amazon...they have the best price around on this one! It's hard to beat the price on a turntable with 3 speeds AND dust cover AND cartridge that looks and plays like this one. I'm a professional musician and my ears tell me a lot about sound quality without having to go overboard and spend a fortune to get great results. I'm not a DJ so I don't really need the reverse platter mode etc. but I like the fact that it has a strobe to maintain the proper speed, etc etc..I did a LOT of homework regarding which way I would transfer my LP's to disk. I have a bunch of turntables and this one is the best for this purpose. I've tried ION's,DAK Preamp etc.. this turntable beat them all as far as sound quality (with the exception of the DAK preamp which is ALSO very good and a close second in sound quality if you want to just use your own existing turntable)Just going right into my Creative Soundcard for me is an easier solution. For best results use Spin It Again software for cleaning the recordings of hiss,pops, etc and EQ.My LP transfers now rival some re-issued CD's I've purchased of the same material thanks to the methods I use now. I was thinking of upgrading the cartridge to a Shure but after reading a few reviews, although I'm sure it's a great cartridge having owned a Shure V15 type II for years which I still have, the reviewer whose advice I listened to most on Amazon was one guy who actually did an A/B comparison and burned a CD with tracks from BOTH cartridges and noticed NO real difference between them. All in all I would buy this turntable again hands down if I needed to replace it. It is one of the sweetest deals I've found on the web.

I'm very pleased with my purchase. This is a great turntable that is on par with products twice its price. The included preamp is a great feature, and it helped make my decision to buy the PL120.

Overall, I am _very_ satisfied, and I'm very picky when it comes to audio gear.

However: The needle is TERRIBLE! It makes my records sound flat and blare-y. In fact, MP3s played on my computer through the same stereo receiver sound as good or better than my 180-gram records when played with this needle. I suppose it's not too big of a deal considering that this turntable is so affordable, but interested buyers should be aware of this.

This is my first record player, as I've just started getting into collecting vinyl records from my favorite artists. This arrived exactly on time, and was so easy to set up. I am very satisfied with it. It's so easy to figure out and it looks beautiful. It's got pretty much everything you'd ever want or need. It's fun to go through my parent's record collection and listen to all the music they loved when they were my age. I definitely recommend this record player to anybody who's looking for it. It's a great price and a great deal!