Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First off, let me start by saying that I am not new to the vinyl spinning community. I have been collecting vinyl since the early 60s. Of course one also needed something to spin the vinyl on, so over the years I have owned several turntables. Direct drive, belt drive and rim drive. Pioneer, Dual, Technics, Garrard and even a Marantz thrown in for good measure. I still have a few of these, but they are getting old. I will restore them as time and funds allow, but I recently set up a new system using a vintage Pioneer receiver driving a pair of vintage Advent speakers I recently rebuilt. My Dual 1229 worked well, but I wanted to treat myself to a new turntable. So the search began. I reviewed a number of new offerings and came awfully close to ordering one of the new Audio Technica units. Their cartridges always served me well, so maybe I'll try one of their turntables. Then I discovered the Fluance RT81. It struck me as a beautiful, clean looking turntable. The specs were excellent, and after reading many of the reviews and questions, I ordered one. The box came two days later. The unit was extremely well packaged. Everything was there. I would have expected nothing less. After unpacking the unit, I set it up following the instructions in the user's guide. I could have set the unit up on my own having set up many turntables in the past. Mounting, balancing, calibrating you name it. All turntable set up basically the same way. That having been said, I recommend following the step by step instruction if you are new to vinyl spinning and turntables. One element I found curious was the recommendation to perform a 24 hour burn in. Never in my past have I ever had to perform this function. But, I'm not a Fluance engineer, so I performed this step as recommended. Simply plugged it into power and allowed the turntable to spin for the recommended period. The following day I was finally able to set the turntable up next to the host receiver. Checked the tone arm balance once I leveled the turntable, adjusted the tracking force using my digital tracking scale. I found that the tracking force obtained by turning the balance weight was at 2.25g, but that could be because I might not have zeroed everything right on the money. This is why I like using a digital tracking scale. This is a good one if you're interested: Neoteck Digital Turntable Stylus Force Scale Gauge 0.01g Blue LCD Backlight for Tonearm Phono Cartridge $12.99. After setting the anti-skating and giving the turntable one last check over, I dropped my first piece of vinyl onto the platter. Led Zeppelin 1. Once I made sure my volume was low and the receiver was set to phono,I released the tonearm and lowered the stylus into the record groove. Slowly brought up the volume. This turntable sounds great! Clear and precise. I'm not a sound engineer so I don't know the appropriate terms to use in describing the overall sound quality of this unit and the accompanying cartridge. It simply sounds great. I was especially impressed with the guitar licks on Dazed & Confused. I listened to both sides of this album and it sounded as though I was hearing them for the first time. I then decided on some Lynyrd Skynyrd. One More From The Road. Sure the Advents sound great, but they can only produce the sound sent to them from whatever source you happen to be using. Bottom line? I highly recommend this turntable! I gave all ratings a five star rating except durability. Ask me for that rating a year or more from now, but I have no doubt it will perform well for years to come. Note: It is always highly recommended that you check the cartridge alignment. I did this using my cartridge alignment protractor and found the alignment to be dead on. Also, I read some reviews that stated some folks were having issues with platter speed variations or the inability to actually bring the platter to the correct speed. Not sure if this is something that will show itself farther down the road. But, my platter speed is right on the money. I use a strobe disk for 60Hz to check this. Now to sit back and enjoy my new turntable.