Review Details

RT81 Elite High Fidelity Vinyl Turntable

Product Rating:

Product Review (submitted on September 7, 2019):

I purchased the walnut finish version of this turntable. It is one solid good looking turntable. The walnut finish has a real nice vintage feel to it, and is a nice match to my old vintage (70’s) Yamaha receiver, which for me was one of it’s selling points. The first thing you’ll notice when unpacking this is how heavy it is. A very solid build, although not all real wood, it’s heavy duty !

Set up was very easy, and the instructions provided are clear and concise. After setting the tonearm balance and tracking force to 2 grams using the counterweight scale as per the instructions, I checked it with a stylus force gauge which measured 2.5 grams. I backed it off a little closer to 2 grams using the gauge as my final reference. Stylus alignment for me was bang on out of the box. This turntable does not feature a built-in strobe for checking speed, but using a turntable RPM app on my my phone, the 45 and 33-1/3 speeds were bang on, right out of the box. Speed adjustments are on the bottom, which is a little inconvenient. A built in strobe with topside adjustment would have been nice for when I might need to adjust it. I have an old turntable where the platter strobe scale is on the bottom side of the platter with a small window on the topside of the turntable. A mirror in the turntable body below the window allows for viewing, which is a very elegant non-intrusive design.

Using the phono out to a receiver, this turntable sounds great with the provided Audio Technica ATN95E stylus cartridge. Upgrading to another stylus (or whole cartridge) would be an easy option for down the road if you wanted to try and improve on the sound for your personal taste. One reason I got this was for a high quality product to transfer some vinyl into my computer. I used the internal pre-amp output to the computer's audio-in, and noticed when sampling that the waveform showed a sort of dampened/limited amplitude effect for the negative swing of the waveform. Using the phono out to a receiver pre-amp, then into the computer didn't exhibit this. So perhaps the pre-amp could be better, as others have suggested. Although I couldn't really hear the difference (with my aging ears), it just seemed odd. In the end I got a proper sound device for sampling - an ART USB Phono Plus Audiophile Computer Interface. Using the turntable phono out and this interface, the results with sampling into a computer were fantastic - cleaner than the computer sound card. As for using the turntable with a receiver, I would use the receiver pre-amp anyway. The phono interface cable is pretty cheap, but it's the same kind of stuff you get with every stereo device. A thicker gauge wire, heavier shielded cable is an easy upgrade.

The S-shaped tonearm is real nice. I much prefer the look of it to a straight one. The 3-way selector switch for 33-OFF-45 is nice and solid, but I probably would have configured it to an OFF-33-45 design. That way you're not cycling the power every time you change speed - which for me was quite a bit for sampling a number of different records. There is nowhere to really 'store' the 45 adapter, a small circular indent and/or a bit of a spindle like shaft at the back of the turntable body would have been nice. The smoked turntable cover is a nice touch, as opposed to a clear one. The tonearm lever is a bit tight to the tonearm - if you look at other models you can see they have addressed that, so maybe later versions of this one that are produced might incorporate that slight design change?

This turntable does not have any automatic cueing features. Although it would have been nice, it at least has an auto shutoff feature so when the stylus reaches the end of the vinyl lead out groove it won't run on forever. The stylus will sit in the groove with the record not spinning until you lift the tonearm to park it, at which time the turntable will come back to life and spin, unless you turn the power switch off first. The auto shutoff only stops the platter from spinning, the rest of the turntable is still powered, so there is an active audio signal out.

All in all, I am very happy with this turntable. It is solidly built, nothing seems cheap or clunky about the mechanisms. The walnut finish is very nice, and it sounds great. I noticed the price is the same no matter where you look to purchase, so I chose to order directly from the Fluance website to support the company directly, and also where you get free shipping and a $10 discount code pops up. Great value for the money - Highly recomended.