Review Details

RT85 Reference High Fidelity Vinyl Turntable

Product Rating:

Product Review (submitted on January 14, 2022):

My daughter started getting into vinyl so we bought her a Bluetooth Audio Technica and BT speaker. Since we both have the same taste in music I got the bug too, but I wanted an all analog turntable setup. After doing some research I landed on the Fluance RT85.Setup was mostly straightforward, though I needed a bit of help with setting the counterweight to balance the tonearm. Fortunately Fluance's site has a support page and after searching for "balance tonearm RT85" I found a video which cleared up my questions.I paired the turntable with a Fluance PA10 phono preamp and Yamaha stereo receiver and I'm very happy with the setup - vinyls sound great from my Klipsch bookshelf speakers. There is no automatic start - you set and lower the needle manually but it is an easy process. There is also a handy auto stop feature that can be switched on to stop spinning when a record is done, saving the stylus and your records.My only minor gripe is that if you are using a separate preamp from the amp/receiver there is only one included grounding wire and RCA cable. The recommended setup is to have a ground wire to the preamp from the turntable and a separate ground wire from the preamp to the amp/receiver. I knew this going in and RCA cables are easy to find but a ground wire of good quality was harder to come by. If you have the time and tools you can make your own, but I ended up ordering a ground wire from a high feedback seller on EBay. If your amp has a phono input and you won't be using a separate preamp this is a moot point but I still wish Fluance had included two grounding wires for both types of setups.If you're looking to get started with HiFi vinyl sound I think that this is a great place to start. Just make sure you're aware of how you want your setup to be and make sure that you have all of the equipment to do so.