Classic Hifi Care

I gave three bucks for this thing at an auction in Missouri. It was filthy dirty when I got it, but I don't believe it had been used much, if at all. The thing about it that caught my eye was the Stanton cartridge. I didn't know much about them, still don't, but I knew enough to know it was worth the $3 if the turntable was total junk. I cleaned it up and found it still had the original needle in it and that it was still good. This is my favorite turntable. It is ugly, but I still like it. It is direct drive, you can do almost anything to it and it won't mind. It will go forwards, run backwards, you can vary the speed 10% fast or slow and it won't care. I have it tracking at 2 grams, which seems to be it's happy spot. You can take a Stanton 500 to five grams and they will work in changers. I don't have the Ortofon cartridge mounted yet, but the Stanton 500 is up to this point my favorite cartridge. The downside is that needles are expensive for this cartridge, but that is a minor gripe.....

Some day I would like to hear a Stanton cartridge.

Bill

Stanton is a cousin of Pickering. One bought the other, I think Stanton bought Pickering. When I started out messing with stereo in the early 1960's, Stanton, Pickering, Empire and Shure were the most common "good yet affordable " cartridges. To my way of thinking, a Stanton will be hard to beat. They make models way above the 500 both in performance and in price. The Stanton 500 was known as a "broadcast" cartridge. It was so tough, radio stations used it and DJ's used it because you could drop it onto a record, run it backwards and generally abuse it and it didn't care. Kinda like the VM of cartridges. A VM table with a Stanton cartridge would make an unbreakable combination..