After tweaking the two speeds 33 and 45 the stability of the highly crafted machine is quite impressive but do thoroughly clean the inner and outer rims of the platter as it uses a very sophisticated speed detection and correction system. It is imperative that you supply your own RCA photo patches and I highly recommend the 3ft Cable Direct from Germany available here on Amazon for about 10 bucks. These cables can make an audible difference and seem to be a wonderful match for the Audio Technica cartridge and the Retro life tonar which in itself is very impressive!
Some reviewers will complain about the use of plastic on the tone arm but I'm telling you the combination of the plastic head shell area and the metal tone arm works wonderfully with the Audio Technica 3600 l phone cartridge which can easily be upgraded to the two gram tracking 91b. Once this is done you will have a machine but you need not make any apologies to any of the audio files knobs who spent hundreds or even thousands on their equipment. From the lowest lows to the highest highs the detail is stunning! And so is the polymer wood plastic finish in cherry wine of the unit itself. It is absolutely gorgeous to look at in person rather than just pictures alone and the entire turntable kit built in the USA by you with foreign parts coming from China renders a first rate analog reproducer that you can be proud of and enjoy for years to come. Happy listening and God bless! PJs 2
Update March 2023.. I just mounted the Audio Technica vm95c blue cartridge to the tone arm for an upgrade and now the sound quality has been taken up another level and it was so easy because of the threaded mounting holes in the new VM 95c. I highly recommend that retro life include this cartridge with this turntable in the future. The nice thing other than the easy mount is that the user can upgrade by simply buying a more expensive stylus right on up to the ml micro line one at the top of the line!