Thanks to all who have responded
To fjn04, I have not decided to make a U-Turn....yet
To Spencer, I not giving up on the U-Turntable, but keeping the bullpen warmed up is my style ( maybe a bad one). This turntable quest has had its "price limit" up and downs since it first begun I should take my own advice: "that you get what you pay for" (almost all of the time), and if you keep pushing the envelope, it will break on through to the other side. I think Jim Morrison said that..
Nevertheless, I actually like the looks and sound of the turntable. It is quiet, spins smoothly, and appear stable with low wow and flutter. However, receiving the TT with a bad motor (that produced a hum during play) right of the box was not a incentive to keep it. However, UT replaced the motor and installation was easy, the hum seems to have disappeared or has been significantly reduced to be almost inaudible.
Caveats: The belt supplied with the TT is very difficult to install around the pulley and the acrylic platter which seems fairly well made for a TT in this price range. The supplied RCA phono cables look antiques packed with 1970 era tape decks, and will be replaced soon.
Sound quality using the Ortofon 2M Red cartridge is good to very good. The soundstage is wide, but depth is just average. Imaging is better than above average, and not furry around the edges of voices or instruments with.an acceptable amount of air around the instruments.
The cartridge/ tonearm interface work well enough to produce good tight bass with little to no overhang. Clarity overall is good, but gets less so in the upper mids and lower treble range.
I have used 2M Red cartridge before on a Rega P3-24 TT which I sold 4 years ago when the downsize devil popped up again. Therefore, I can again identify the limitation of the 2M Red, even in the U-Turn tonearm which is probably not equal to Rega's 301b arm on the P3-24 table.
Overall, I would recommend this table to budget-minded audio system builders, which I said to myself during yesterday's LP listening session. I think I can push the performance and sound quality envelope of the TT with the Denon DL-110 which I mentioned before. Based on a few reviews of the Denon DL-103 and DL103R, the DL-110 is less of a hassle to install and calibrate, and lighter than the bigger brothers at 8.5gms each. Cheers, SJ
