You’ll find lots of articles about turntables & vinyl on my website. You’ll also find stuff about records and analogue systems that incorporate vinyl.
Looking for one of the best affordable tonearms? The Jelco SA-750D is a quality tonearm, at a sensible price, designed to fit a variety of turntables. UPDATE, 2018: The Jelco SA-750D is now superseded by the TK-850S. UPDATE 2020: I’m very sad to announce that, as of mid-2020, Jelco is no longer in business. A […]
A customer of mine recently acquired a new-old-stock (NOS) Sansui SR-929 direct-drive turntable, in original box! Originally posted December 2015, updated July 2025! The Sansui SR-929 was the best turntable Sansui ever made, in my opinion. Tim asked me to take this lovely Sansui SR-929 out of the box for the first time and recommission
NOS Sansui SR-929 Turntable Unbox & Recommission! Read More »
As a surprise birthday gift, I was asked to restore this lovely old French ERA Mk6 belt-drive turntable. I was happy to assist and it allowed me to work on a deck I’d not worked on before. The ERA Mk6 is a belt-drive deck from the early seventies. It is slightly unusual in the actual
ERA Mk6 Belt-Drive Turntable Repair & Restoration Read More »
I recently overhauled this lovely old Pioneer PL-530 direct-drive turntable. Let’s take a closer look. This model is not especially common, but it has a great vintage look and some great features that I think make it one to keep an eye out for. Pioneer made some great belt-drive and direct-drive decks and many of
The Dual 1228 idler-drive turntable is a great entry-level deck and a little cooler than many others. You need to be aware of potential issues with this and other Dual turntables from this era, though. A customer recently delivered his newly acquired Dual 1228 idler-drive turntable for service. The deck was not playing at the
The phenomenal Fidelity Research XF-1 moving coil step-up transformer is one of the best ways to get the most out of a good MC cartridge. Fidelity Research is one of the most iconic and revered names in vinyl. No other brand has quite the same status and FR cartridges and step-up transformers have become legendary
My friend recently had a little mishap with his beautiful Yamaha GT-2000 direct drive turntable. Naturally, I helped him sort it out… The mishap occurred when my friend was cleaning his beloved GT-2000. While using a cleaning cloth near the headshell, he must have brought the cloth too near to the stylus and just caught
Given the renewed interest in turntables, especially quality decks, I wanted to share some details about servicing the legendary Kenwood KD-600. The Kenwood KD-600 / 650 is a classic direct drive turntable from the late ’70s. The KD-600 is a superb deck, for a number of technical reasons: 20 pole, 30 slot brushless motor, synthetic concrete-composite
I have been lucky enough to have a brand new Primare R32 Phono Preamplifier to audition over the last few weeks and I wanted to share my experiences in this review. The Primare R32 phono preamplifier is designed in Sweden and is a fully discrete, solid-state, DC-coupled, class-A phono preamplifier. The Primare R32 has three
One of my regular customers recently acquired a gorgeous new old stock (NOS) Sansui SR-929 direct-drive turntable from her original owner in the USA and asked me to check it out. This beautiful Sansui SR-929 also needed the voltage and set her up for Australia and a full set-up and naturally, I wanted to share
Sansui SR-929 NOS Turntable Unboxing and Set-Up! Read More »
