Review Details

RT81 Elite High Fidelity Vinyl Turntable

Product Rating:

Product Review (submitted on April 13, 2022):

This Fluance RT-81 seems to be pretty decent. Hard to compare when so few others have turntables. Major complaint: It tends to pick up a lot of low rumble and vibration. I had a speaker with good bass near it and it set off a runaway low roar feedback event. I had a set of Audio Technica isolation / leveling feet on hand and used those. Helped a lot. Keep the cover down to keep it from picking up shelf or cabinet rumble. My previous turntable was a Dual with the platter and drive on a floating, spring mounted chassis. Cuts WAY back on rumble. Need to bring those back? The AT95e cartridge also decent. I put a little too much pressure on it during cleaning it and bent the stylus. Had to order a new one. Don't remember them being that fragile decades ago.The RT-81 built-in preamp for line level seems decent. My Carver receiver from 1987 has a phono input and internal preamp and it seems to have a slight edge on the RT-81 but close. WARNING: If using a receiver or amp with both line and phono input, be VERY careful if you switch inputs - especially with the record playing. If the RT-81 is set to "Line" and you plug into "Phono", get ready for a massive overload. I made that mistake with the volume up and, along with the runaway rumble event, led to two blown woofers. I would also suggest upgrading the supplied RCA red / white cables for a better build. Also, when I use "Phono" level signal, hooking up the ground wire actually created MORE 60 / 120 cycle hum. I left it off and it sounds fine. Using line level avoids that issue.