Technics SL-Q210 - any good?

[venerator]

I am looking to buy my first turntable just for occasional listening to records at home (I only own a few records at the moment). I want to spend under $100 for the turntables as it's my first setup and I don't want to get carried away before I even have a decent amount of records to listen to. I found some Technics SL-Q210 for about the right price and was wondering if these are decent enough as a first buy?

I am pretty picky about how it will look (I definitely want something black) and am after something vintage just for the look and feel that comes with that. I am pretty keen on Technics as a brand as well because of its reputation. The Technics SL-Q210 seem to tick all these boxes but I am hesitant because I really only started looking into turntables a few days ago.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

[surprisetech]

I think you'd be pretty happy with one of these for a first Turntable.

My father-in-law had an earlier SL-Q model for years and it was a great machine. Had heaps of interest when we put it on ebay a few years ago.

I've got an SL-D303 from 1981 that is still going great.

I don't think the SL-Q210 has a built in strobe, so I would just recommend getting a strobe disk to check that the crystal oscillator is still accurate.

You can download one here: (You want the 50Hz one for Australia.

http://www.extremeph...strobe_disk.htm

Good luck.

Edited August 28, 2012 by surprisetech

[Vintage_Hi_Fi]

Definitely a good entry level turntable - pending on how much you pay. If the needle hasn't been changed recently I suggest you replace it as you wont know how many hours it has been used for and could damage your valuable records! These are very cheap and you can find them on ebay.