Seeking Audiophile Turntable Advice

[HankB]

I still have some vinyl music (records, that is) and occasionally I listen to them. I've had my current turntable just over 40 years (a Sony PS-X555ES) which is a linear tracking turntable with Sony's "Biotracer" arm. It's worked well - until now. All of a sudden, the arm won't translate. Platter turns, arm rises - but it WILL NOT move over to the record. If I push the button to manually move it, it lowers and the turntable turns off. Gentle (note, GENTLE) pressure won't move the arm, either. A couple of calls to local "vintage audio repair" shops got responses that "we don't work on those." Too complex, I think.

I'll probably open it up and see if there's anything obviously wrong, but if as I suspect it's something on the circuit board that's stopped working, that's it, I'll just sell it on ebay for parts.

SO . . . does anyone have a recommendation for a decent automatic or semi-automatic (HA!) turntable? (Don't want full manual, I don't want to be on standby when the record is finished.) I've looked at the offerings from Dual, Denon, and Audio-Technica and they look promising - the Dual being about 2x the price of the others; don't know if it's twice as good. Just wondering what the APS collective thinks.

[Brad Johnson]

Not in tune with current offerings enough to render an opinion in that respect, but I do know Sony units with the BioTracer arms are nightmarishly complex affairs. Unless you can find someone who specializes in them (and I mean specializes, not just familiar with) then repair reliability runs from poor to nonexistent.

With the resurgence of vinyl and the audiophile community's infatuation with the format, I would expect there to be a decent selection of players to choose from. I presume you've already hit the forums to see if there's a consensus. Also likely there's more than a few YouTube channels dedicated to reviews.

Might check out CheapAudioMan on youtube. I don't know if he does turntable reviews, but he has good info on other stuff that's (kinda) affordable.

Brad

[HankB]

Local "vintage" hi-fi shops (politely) declined to touch my Sony turntable, and the main national repair center for Sony (United Radio) said due to the unit's age there are no spare parts or current service manuals available. A bit of searching on the forums suggest the problem could be anything from a defective Hall sensor to a bad IC on the PCB - people with the same issue largely "parted out" their unit. I think I'll do the same. I can get a new Denon automatic turntable at Best Buy for a reasonable price (20% credit on my BB card) so I think I'll do that; I'm NOT going to spend a ridiculous amount for a "true audiophile" manual turntable (they're still making them) to play some of my OLD records. (Also have some old classics I inherited - Glen Miller, Stan Kenton, etc. Limited editions.  )

[JTHunter]

HankB - similar problem but on the video side.  I have a 4-head VCR that MAY have broken a drive belt but can't find anyplace to work on it.  It's about 35-40 years old so a broken drive belt (a fancy rubber band) doesn't surprise me.
The other is a 10-15 y.o. JVC combo unit.  The DVD side still works fine but, for an unknown reason, the tape side is eating cassettes.  JVC told me to ship it to Atlanta WITH a check for $XX (don't remember) for them to work on it. 
Never sent it.
And, I have a fruit crate FULL of 33 LPs that I would LOVE to digitize and burn to CDs.  I just don't have room in this computer room to set up a turntable.