Way back in October you may have remebered we ran a little 'guess the album' pop quiz, with the winner taking home Goldring's excellent GR1.2 turntable. There were a string of admirable near-miss answers from many of you, but it was Steve Kenderdine who guessed correctly first. A couple of months after dusting down his vinyl collection he's kindly given us a comprehensive verdict of the player:
My first impressions on unpacking from the box: nice looking equipment, albeit with no frills, very simple black and perspex appearance.
Setting up the turntable was relatively straightforward but perhaps not quite as easy as the instructions made out - adjusting the tracking weight is a real trial and error procedure - even pushing the balance on the arm of the deck took a bit of working out (eventually realised that the tiny plastic screw in the balance was over tightened!!)
Once the setting up was done I was ready for all systems go, looking forward to listening to some vinyl I hadn't played for over 15 years!! That's when I ran into trouble. Although possessing three amps, none of them were “analogue friendly” - no real surprise, as I haven't played anything but digital media since the start of the nineties.
A quick visit to the Goldring site revealed it wasn't a unique situation - what was needed was a pre-amp to connect turntable to amplifier so everything would work.
Goldring makes a very nice looking pre-amp specifically designed for the turntable, which is small enough to fit unobtrusively underneath, priced at about £50.
Being fairly skint (well this was just before Christmas!!) decided a quick visit to a certain online auction site was called for…sure enough picked up a generic pre-amp for under a tenner!
Once the pre-amp arrived it was simplicity itself to start actually using the turntable for its intended purpose - playing vinyl!!
Have played a variety of different sorts of music over the last few weeks, and have absolutely no complaints - the Goldring has handled them all equally well, even some very deep King Tubby dub!! Sound quality has been excellent - far more “organic” than digital - although one thing I haven't missed over the years is the “crackle” you get when playing older albums.
It does take a bit of getting used to having to “turn the record over” every 20 minutes or so, but I would say the extra effort is worthwhile. Would I recommend buying it? Certainly would, especially at the price - I have a feeling that there are other more expensive turntables that perhaps won't perform as well. Will I be stopping using CDs? Afraid not - far too prevalent nowadays - although perhaps if there had been more affordable turntables of this quality around fifteen years ago you might have got a different answer!
If you want to join Steve in picking up an AVR prize, then better get yourself along to our competitions page where you'll find details on everything currently up for grabs.
