Step down voltage for Japan to US turntable

You should buy a converter for $50 otherwise you will either burn out the motor or circuit control board after a few months - I am assuming this is a direct drive Hall motor type. table.

I speak from bitter experience. One problem is that our 120V can easily be 125V in North America, and that is just too much over a period of time. For $50 it is worth it.

Radicalsteve.. Thanks for your input. I've located a stepdown transformer and will buy it tomorrow. I assume that even with 125v comming in the transformer will only pass 100v. (Wish I'd kept the Exactpower 15a.)

Transformers don't limit the voltage, they only change it by a fixed ratio. If you buy a 120-100 then that ratio is 6-5. If you feed it 125 it will output 104.2V

Since the voltage in Japan varies as much or more than it does here I think that is acceptable.

Many times the internal transformer has multiple taps, which allow you to use it with a 120 or 220 volts mains. This should be a simple job for any decent technician and save you the hassle of yet another gadget in the system.
On the other hand, if you are buying an adapter the make sure that it is NOT an auto-transformer. It would then behave as an isolation tranformer and there are benefits to having such a gadget...