Customer Reviews

Pyle PLTTB1 Professional Belt-Drive Manual Turntable

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Even though this turntable only costs $70 it sounds great and has exelent tracking ability.It is light compared to many older turntables at 7 pounds but it has a shock isolated base so it doesn't skip.The included cartridge is an Audio Technica AT3400 which is a good cartridge with a retal value of $34.However when it wears out I recomend you replace it with a better cartridge.Overall this is the best turntable selling for under $200.Oh by the way the retal price on this turntable is $180.

I would like to add the most suitable replacement styalus I've found for this cartridge is the Fisher ST09D Stylus.
Although I replaced the cartridge with a Grado Prestige Black.

For the money, this turntable is an outstanding value. Tone arm has anti-skating device and included Audio Technica cartridge provides very good sound and tracking.
Manual cueing device is easy to use and stroboscope keeps speed accurate.
Slight hum during play from belt drive but does not inflict itself on sound output -
only audible if you put your ear to the turntable. Dust cover is hinged for easy use.
Plays my old 33s perfectly without any skipping.

This is a great turntable for $69.99 but just keep in mind that the msrp for this turntable is $180.00 so you're actually getting a really good deal on a turntable that does really well. I've had this turn table for quite some time now and I must say that this machine has far exceeded my expectations. When I first bought this turntable I didn't expect much cause it was so inexpensive. But after playing some of my old frank sinatra records, I must say that the sound quality is great. This is a nice and solid turntable without all the bells and whistles. If you want to enjoy all your 33's and 45's this is the machine for you. You can't go wrong with this machine...so "ADD TO CART"

I bought mine to digitize my LP collection, so I did not need something that would last a long time. It does the job but a few disappointments:
- the stylus died after only a few hours of playing (less than 10), fortunately this is easily replaceable
- in my case the right channel is somewhat attenuated compared to the right channel and no amount of fudging with the anti-skate improved things. This can be compensated on your stereo by playing with the channel balance on your amplifier or on your computer by amplifying the one channel with the recording software (audacity in my case).

So no show stopper so far, just annoying defects that come with the cheap construction. On the other hand it's nice to have all these controls (speed, weight, anti-skate) and my kids think it's way cool (for once).

In conclusion, if you want a keeper, you might want to stick to a brand name and dish a few more bucks. If you need a turntable for a temporary usage, and are ready to compromise quality for price, then this one will do.

- Stroboscope and pitch adjustment are a godsend. with one of my old turntables, if the RPMs were slightly off, there was nothing you can do about it. Now with this its completely adjustable.
- The arm and stylus are weighted perfectly and are completely adjustable. No skating.
- Rubber soles on the bottom of the turntable eliminate almost all vibration.
- Sounds amazing.

NOTE: you MUST have a pre-amp. It outputs to Phono, rather than line level so you need to run it through a preamp. It doesn't say anything about this in the product description but i'm just letting it be known.

Comes with a good cartridge and needle, comes with a plastic top, with weight changing and anti skating. Other people seem to have problems with the shipping, but i had no problems. The plastic was not warped. It is 62% off, this is probably as good as the expensive ones. Make sure you get a preamp for this, it does not have one buit in.

The price was $69.00. The installation was straight forward; it took less that 30 minutes. The precision tone-arm balancing instruction was well written and the tone arm balanced quickly. The sound pick-up quality is very good.

It's cheap and it works. That's the most important thing. It doesn't have a robotic arm or autoloader, but it does play records and they sound great. Just remember, you need a phono input on your receiver, or a pre-amp to use this record player. Otherwise, the volume will be really, really low. My main receiver didn't have a phono amp, so I was a little disapointed, but a cheaper older stereo we had worked fine, and now I can listen to the few records I have without trouble. The unit itself appears to be very sturdy, and will last a long time.

I realized the CDs that I was buying was basically a copy of my album collection. I decided to digitize my album collection instead of buying CDs, plus there were some albums that aren't available on CD. I tried reviving my old Sansui SR 838 turntable without success. I purchased this turntable for the express purpose of digitizing my album collection.

From reading some of the other reviews, it appears that some assembly was required. Mine arrived completely assembled.

The turntable doesn't have a built in preamp (which was fine by me) so you will have to obtain a preamp.

It comes with a nice hard plastic dust cover, which isn't shown in the picture for this listing.

This turntable has an "S" shaped tone arm with an adjustable counterweight, anti-skate and adjustable pitch control. It has the older screw type headshell and cartridge arrangement. The Sony equivalent to this turntable is more expensive and has none of those features. It also has a lever to lower and raise the tone arm.

The cartridge that comes with the turntable sounded fine to me. I did have to do a little tweaking. The headshell was a little askew and not parallel to the platter. There is a screw on the underside of the tone arm that looked like it was to do this adjustment but it wasn't easily accessible so I just torqued the headshell. (Not recommended.) I later changed to my old Sansui headshell, which had an adjustable collar so I could easily rotate the headshell to the proper orientation.

That being said, there are some shortcomings with this turntable. The turntable platter is plastic and was a little distorted. I could see a little wobble as it rotated. The speed control is a little off. There is a strobe light and markings on the platter so you can see its speed. There is a slider knob to control the pitch. You can see the markings advance or retard as you move the slider. With the slider set at Zero, the mark is supposed to stay in one place. On my turntable it didn't. You could see the speed advance a little, pause, then advance a little, pause.... etc. It does this continously. If I tweaked the slider, I could get it to where it would waver a little back and forth. That was as good as I could get it. I was unable to get it to where it would stay steady in one place. During most parts of songs, I couldn't hear anything out of the usual, but during long sustained notes, especially at the end of songs I could hear the sound waver. I'm not sure if that was due to the distorted platter, unsteady speed, or a combination of the two.

The turntable is very light (as turntables go) and the feet are small. This makes it more susceptible to bumps and vibrations. I lifted up the platter to see the belt. It looked more like a big rubber band to me. As to how long it would last is questionable. Only time will tell. I checked online for a replacement belt and was unable to find one made specifically for this turntable. You would probably have to look for a generic belt for it.

The platter mat is made of a felt like type of material. When I tried to use my Discwasher brush to clean the album, the album stayed in place while the platter and mat rotated underneath it. I replaced the felt mat with an anti static mat and it grips the album sufficently to use my Discwasher brush. The anti static mat is the same thickness as the felt mat. This is important in order to maintain the correct tone arm to album geometry since the tone arm height isn't adjustable.

Even with those shortcomings, I'm very satisfied with this turntable. Once I digitize my album collection, the turntable will be put away and rarely used again, if ever. That's why I didn't want to spend alot of money on a turntable. If I was going to be playing albums on a regular basis thru a stereo system, I would have gotten something more expensive, like the Audio-Technica AT-PL120. This turntable suited my purpose just fine and offered the most bang for the buck.

I took my sweet time learning about turntables before deciding on this one and you should too, there is a lot to learn. This one had everything I was looking for and then some, like the shock absorbing feet it sits on, very cool and works too. Sets up in about 10 mins out of the box, shipped with the belt disconnected (thank you) so don't panic when you push start for the first time and it does not spin. Just read the directions and take your time getting the tone arm balance correct too, it's worth it. Had a 10 year old reciever with a phono input (this is important, do your research) and a pair of Bose shelf speakers just sitting in the closet which are now back in the living room belting out my favorite tunes. I had forgot how good real music speakers can sound with the right turntable, I'd been listening to digital & CD through a movie surround sound system.