Audio-Technica AT-PL120 Professional Direct-Drive Turntable

I bought this turntable for my dad so he could listen to his records. It was easy to set up and worked very well. Glad I got this one and not one of the cheaper Sony's or the USB turntables. It has all speeds 45, 33 1/3, and 78. The ability to easily change cartriges is there. It hooked up to his recevier easily, and has the built in pre amp so I didn't have to buy and hook up a external one. This turntable sounds great, has well built constrution, and has most if not all of the extras you need. (Strobe, tracking, weight adjustment, pitch control). I listened to several records and I thought it sounded great, you get such a rich full sound from vinyl. If you want a good turntable for a great price I think this one is the way to go.

This turntable is everything we expected and more. It is very well built and easy to use. We are very pleased with the sound quality.

WOW! I really researched buying a turntable to not only play my old LP's, but that had a phono pre-amp that would allow transferring those analog recordings to cd or mp3 format. This is a fantastic turntable for the money. I remember all of those great turntables from the 70's and the AT-PL120 is just as good if not better. Assembly was straight forward, just follow the directions. I was playing the turntable in about 15 minutes. Sound is awesome, very heavy and well constructed.

I gave it only 4 stars because of certain problems with the ATP-2 cartridge and a poor manual. I purchased the AT-PL120 because I needed a way to transfer LPs to CD with high fidelity, and it has a built-in pre-amp so I can connect directly to my computer sound card. It was also a bargain price and loaded with features including some I won't use because I am not a DJ. For instance, it has the ability to adjust the speed +- 20% using a slider. It can also play records backwards - in case you want to see if the Beatles really said "Paul is dead." The turntable has vibration damping legs, but for DJ use, please note that any finger taps to the turntable body WILL transmit a boom to the speakers.

It arrived promptly from Amazon in perfect condition. Setup was easy and straight forward, although the manual is not detailed and does not clearly describe all features and adjustments. The speed is dead on. After purchasing an RCA adapter cable I plugged it into my computer and cued up a record. SURPRISE - the music immediately began playing from the computer speakers. AND the sound quality was very good indeed using the included ATP-2 cartridge (but see below). As recommended by others here, I installed the free sound recording software, Audacity, and within a few minutes I had recorded the first track off the record (being careful the audio volume did not exceed the capacity of Audacity and cause clipping). It was just as easy as that, and the audio quality exceeded my expectations - even my hopes!

The AT-PL120 comes with an ATP-2 cartridge included free. Surprisingly, it turns out to have excellent sound. I compared it to an Ortofon M15 E Super and the Sure M97XE by first recording a WAV file from each cartridge using a track off Paul Simon's "There Goes Rhymin Simon." I used this album because of its clean sound and because I also have the commercial CD. Listening blind (on my medium quality computer speakers, headphones or Klipsch speakers), I can't reliably tell which track is which. The sound is also seemingly identical to that directly from the record, although the commercial CD does have a distinctly different sound. I also compared Copland's Piano Fantasy as played by William Masselos (on Odyssey) with similar results.

UNFORTUNATELY, the ATP-2 cartridge has 2 major problems: 1) It requires a tracking force of 3-5 grams (rather heavy); and 2) MUCH WORSE is that it tracks VERY poorly at the recommended 3.5 grams (with the recommended 3.5 on the anti-skate dial). The first time I tried it (and using the cuing lever), the needle did not set down exactly in a groove. Much to my distress, it then proceeded to skitter across the record surface like an angry monkey (luckily no damage to the LP). It did not even stop at the last groove, proceeding onto the record label!!!! However, by experimentation, I found that this problem was correctable by merely setting the anti-skate dial to 6-7 rather than 3.5. I detect no audible sound defects at this much higher than recommended anti-skate setting (the sound comparisons were done at the higher anti-skate level).

The Sure M97XE cartridge (cheap from Amazon), when mounted on a Stanton head shell (cheap from Amazon) works well with the AT-PL120. It tracks beautifully when set to the recommended 1.75 grams tracking force (with the stabilizer brush down) and the anti-skate dial set to 2. It can also be set to 1.25 grams with the stabilizer brush up, but I detected no improvement in sound quality. REMEMBER that the Sure cartridge is not rated to play backwards, so use the ATP-2 cartridge if you need to do that. Changing head shells is easy and only means unplugging the old head shell from the tone arm, plugging in the new and then resetting the tracking and anti-skate forces.

NOTE 1: The weight dial on the AT-PL120 tone-arm for setting the tracking force is accurate at 2 grams, but when set at 3.0 grams, it is actually producing 3.5 grams (as checked with the Sure SFG-2 Stylus Force Gauge).

NOTE 2: There is definitely something more romantic and magical in listening to an LP, and watching the record go round than plopping on a CD. And the quality is better than I remembered so I am not sure I will actually transfer the music to CDs after all!

I received my AT-PL120 turntable in a very reasonable amount of time and found the packaging to be outstanding. I have used it to transfer many of my LP's to CD with great success. The quality of the product is excellent and I am pleased with my purchase.