Direct Drive

Of course anyone who knows nows there are good & bad examples of just about every turntable design in just about all price ranges. This goes for tonearms too but maybe not so much for cartridges. Similar to loudspeakers (not coincidentally), there are a few really good "buys' here & there at lower prices but generally, good, full range sound & realistic volume levels (for speakers) is going to cost you. 

I used Technics turntables eons ago when I worked in the pro sound industry, sounded pretty good, well made, pretty much set & forget. For my own systems , I've always had good belt drive units from Thorens, VPI, SOTA (w/ a Souther Linear Arm - a bear to set up but did sound good) to my current Basis 2500 w/ their Vector 4 arm. I've had it for 20 years & it sounds as good today as it did new which is VERY good w/only one belt change & 2 new good moving coil cartridges. I agree w/ others here than a good phono amp is required to get the most out of your turntable. 

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!

Congratulations!

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.