Others say...

"OK product, crappy seller"
I received my turntable in, what I thought, perfect condition. "Super Saver Shipping" is actually USP ground from NY, which takes all of eternity and then some, to arrive in CA.

The turntable itself looks sturdy, but I haven't been able to test anything else, as the needle it came with was BROKEN. Which now means I have to buy a $21 dollar replacement. Or wait through the living hell of returning the item to J&R, a seller that doesn't accept normal e-mail returns.

Amazon should really look into who sells on their website.

"Bad Vibrations"
While looking for a replacement for my Bang & Olufsen BeoGram 1602 I found this Technics turntable. Since I have a very nice older Pioneer receiver, I wanted a turntable that didn't have a pre-amp built in. So this turntable looked perfect for what I was looking for. Once I had it all hooked up, I was so excited to listen to my new turntable. I put the needle down, the music began. I did not have the music at a very high level, but as soon as the music started, vibrations came through the platter and made a very very loud humming noise through the needle! While I have only owned a few turntables in my life, this is the first time I've ever had this problem. It can't take any vibrations at all, you will get a hum. This is a great turntable as long as you are not listening to music loud, or if you have speakers that are very far away from the turntable. I owned this player for a total of 10 seconds before I knew that it was the wrong one for me. I am now going to try out the Audio-Technica AT-PL120, I hope that one works better.

""It's good,but...""
I've owned two of these; the 2d,thru Amazon.The thing keeping the SLBD20D from achieving regulance is: Its tonearm's soulnuking habit of backtracking a 45r/m record's leadin groove and thus mathitting. That damn slidecontrol cueing is the reason, I think-it enables the tonearm to,I strongly feel/believe,disconcertingly "have a mind of its own". There's one/ONLY one,33r/m record that's happened to,w/my 2d SLBD20D:An original(1970)copy of "Funkadelic". Technics hella needs to abandon making the LAST LIVING T4P turntable w/slidecontrols,period.It's just played out.Oh,& by the way,Technics:no damn BUTTONS,either,or I'ma HIT SOME SERIOUS ROOF.

"good"
I got this for my husband. He likes it. It works great. We haven't had any problems. We did need to order a pro amp to go with it so it would hook up to our system, but you can get that from the same place. Fast delivery also.

"High end specs in a budget table"
I must disagree with parts of two previous reviews.

Regarding the review of Aug 11th: I am running the table with a Grado Black cartridge and it works perfectly. As a matter of fact, it is essential to ditch the supplies low quality cartridge and go with something else to get decent performance out of the table. There are very few full-frequency (range of at least 20-20,000 HZ), quality P-mount cartridges available and the Grado Black cartridge is one of them. Just make sure that the grounding wire is solidly attached to both the turntable and your phono preamp (or integrated receiver.)

Regarding the review of April 22nd: I have not noticed any speed instabilities. As a matter of fact, this tables listed specs with regards to speed variations / wow&flutter (0.06%) rank up there with, or actually better many high-end table (for example the $1200 Clearaudio Emotion turntable has wow/flutter of 0.2%, over 3X worse than the Technics.) Poor speed stability is very common among `high-end' tables for some unknown reason, and one reason why I feel no rush to `upgrade' tables anytime soon.

I wanted a turntable that was an automatic or at least had automatic return. There are very few decent-quality automatic turntables on the market when I purchased. About the only other game in town was Thorens, and I read many reviews mentioning their quality had gone far downhill some years ago. I even tried a head-to-head comparison against a fully-manual Project Debut III turntable, but the Debut III skipped like crazy no matter what I did, had no convenience features, and had no sonic advantage I could hear over the Technics.

Though no set up is required when using a P-mount cartridge system, I did check cartridge downforce using a cartridge scale and the cartridge alignment using several alignment gauges, just out of curiosity. I found the Technics to be set up with typical Japanese perfection. The alignment was spot on, as was the downforce. I have heard the Project turntables have terrible quality control as far as cartridge alignment and downforce setting from the factory. Improper set-up can ruin your records in a hurry.

I have had this table for over a year and have been extremely pleased with it. I even bought one for my mother. My system could be considered a true entry-level audiophile system (if there is such a thing) and while this table is the most inexpensive piece, it does not seem out of place because of its good sound quality when using the after market Grado Black cartridge. I am using the turntable in conjunction with a Cambridge Audio 640P phono preamp ($200, has a switchable rumble filter), Vincent Audio SP-31 Hybrid Tube preamplifier ($500), Onix Sp-3 stereo tube amplifier ($1,000), and Strata mini loudspeakers ($2,000). I clean all records on a Loricraft record cleaning machine ($2,200) before playing. Once cleaned, they can go years before needing another cleaning.

Last piece of advice for those thinking of upgrading to the high-end manual turntables. Go for it if you want, but before the table upgrade, I believe the best investment anyone can make is buying a good wet record cleaning machine. This opinion was stated in an article in Stereophile magazine. It may sound counterintuitive, but investing in a record cleaning machine, such as a VPI, Nitty Gritty, or my favorite, a Loricraft, will make a greater audible difference per dollar spent than dropping a fortune on a high-end turntable or cartridge. This is because most of the noise heard from records is from the gunk on them and no matter how great your table or cartridge, a dirty record still sounds like crap. A little-known fact: even brand new records have mold release compound on them (so the pressing plant can remove them from the pressing molds) that must be removed by a wet cleaning in order to remove built-in surface noise from the record. In short, a record cleaning machine is essential.