audio-technica turntable
I just recently returned to New Jersey from overseas with my family and I’m bad broke. Ridiculously broke. But I need to listen to my vinyl and my old standby didn’t survive the trip (fuckin’ baggage handlers). So I went on-line and searched for the rare combination in a turntable, or in anything for that matter: cheap and good.
I came up with the ATL-PL50 by Audio-Technica. Because it was refurbished I got it for 30 bucks. I said I was broke. When it arrived I was not expecting anything, I figured it would serve me for a month or two till I got some cash together to get some decent second-hand table. Right out of the box the thing made me nervous, it is plastic as hell. You can’t change the cartridge but you can change the stylus (I consulted some experts and they said it wouldn’t help enough to bother). It has a preamp built in so you can just plug it in and go, another aspect of it I found suspect. It just looks and feels shitty all the way round.
But it doesn’t sound bad at all. Don’t get me wrong, it is not gonna to pull everything out of your albums that’s there and it is not gonna knock your socks off by any means. But you turn it on, put a record on and the damn thing works, hour after hour, day after day and it sounds pretty alright and it’s ridiculously cheap. Which only goes to show that AT still has some respect for what they do and what the customer needs. And how many companies is that still true of?
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