Direct Drive

So I just bought the 1500 from Music Direct. I live in Chicago so I will pick it up probably next weekend, as I will take advantage of proximity to avoid the potential ravages of the shipping company and the rapacious Porch Pirates. This will give me a chance to acquire a few more lps as well. I upgraded the cartridge to Ortofon 2M Blue on the basis of suggestions here.

The phono preamp will probably be superfluous but I haven’t used  my two preamps for several years and although they seem to fire up when plugged in, I just prefer the security of knowing that I can actually play a record the day I set it up and don’t have delayed gratification issues.

This has really been educational. I learned a lot and there are some interesting and knowledgeable posters here that I don’t tend to see in the other Forums on Agon that I frequent. I will post back in a few weeks with impressions.

@mahler123 

Congratulations on fulfilling a longtime desire.The Technics 1500 is a nice table and I'm sure you will get a lot of enjoyment from it and from hunting for those hard to find albums.

Enjoy! That's what it is all about!

Nice vintage DD deck to consider also is the Sony ps-x50 (60 and 70 also, with rising price of course). It has the legendary PUA-7 tonearm. I own one and love it.

I listen to a lot of records and have only vintage DD. Three of them. All Denon. 55F with Unitrac and DL301; DP47 with Grado Sonata and Stanton 881s; and DP59 with DL301 mkii. I doubt I will change although I did think a VPI was equal or a tad better but at what cost an inconvenience and finickiness. Have tried Music Hall 5.1 (years ago), Rega P6, Mofi Ultradeck and found none of them as good as the 47 let alone the 55. I did have a Technics about 15 years ago. Was not impressed. Although I guess the new ones are much better. If you can find a used vintage Denon in good shape for half the price of a new Technics 1500 then consider it. I got all mine before turntable inflation. But considering how much better they were than new belt ones they may still be a deal. If you have 8k for a Basis or the space and patience for a VPI, maybe you will come ahead sonically. But at midfi you won't do better than a used Denon DP, the better vintage models.