No, I dislike cheaply made, overpriced, underperforming turntables, 95% of which happen to be belt drives.

There are many amazing belt-drive turntables out there. One of my two reference turntables is a golden-age, end-game Luxman PD-350 (ie Micro Seiki) belt drive turntable. Yes, the other is a direct drive machine, but I wouldn’t own or still be using the PD-350 many years after acquiring it if I didn’t like it, trust me on this!

That being said, the Luxman PD-350 isn’t your regular belt-drive turntable, and this is important. Good belt-drive decks are excellent, but many are ordinary and far surpassed by direct-drive machines. Far too many people have spent far too long reading about hi-fi rather than experiencing it, and as a result, they have no clue about what’s actually good.

I enjoy the honesty and simplicity of older Rega Planar machines. I love decks like the Pioneer PL-514, Technics SL-23 and Kenwood KD-2055, just to name a few. What I don’t like is crappy turntables, no matter how their platters are driven.

This especially extends to modern overpriced underperformers; unfortunately, most of those are belt-driven, many of the famous brands you’d be familiar with…