What's not to like? sure it'll be cheap and nasty and probably ruin your vinyl if heavily used but £20 all in for a USB record player.

Someone should be along soon to advise us to buy a second hand deck and an amplifier instead.

It looks very cheap and the reviews on Amazon are very poor

I wouldn't let this touch my vinyl. Hell no.... too precious to go cheap cheap oO oO

Better off with the deal of the day on amazon today for an extra £11.

Just no. If you invest in vinyl, get a decent turntable or just don't bother.

If you wish to get an MP3 of your existing records, just buy the CD secondhand off Amazon - usally for around 3 quid each inc postage. Rip it and you're done.

Looks like a toilet seat.

Good brand and deal

an iron nail is cheaper

Is this better than my 1978 technics 1210 mk2 ??

This is not the 'Akai' of old. Akai (which were a very decent brand) went out of business in the 90's... some Chinese company bought the brand name, and now use it to re-brand generic Chinese crap.

I advise you to buy a second hand deck and an amplifier instead - gumtree is full of decent quality hi-fi separates for a pittance

Agree! I bought one of the Akai bluetooth speakers from Morrisons recently and am pretty impressed at quite how bad they managed to make it. Absolute crap.

You already know the answer. But thanks for making it easy to spot the ****.

Weren't at all decent, the only kids in school that had Akai personal stereos was the Gola Gang who used to sell their week's supply of local authority issued free dinner tickets for 10 Benson and a box of Swan Vestas on the Monday morning break time.

Was all about the Walkmans and Aiwa, everything else was pants

Aiwa went the same way too, as have others.

don't buy this, it will destroy your records...

Same price on Zavvi

does anyone know of a good quality affordable turntable with preamp built in to use with powered speakers, looking to upgrade son who has something similar to this now. Looking for something like a Project Elemental

like said already, do it properly or don't bother!

Nah :grin: I believe this specific model was purchasable for around 40 quid from Argos when I was a first/second year at school(circa 1983) whilst a decent Walkman like say the ghastly yellow sports thing or the more compact sleek Aiwa ones were pushing the mighty 3 digit threshold.

You'll also find Currys and Dixons were busy pushing pony Akai 14 inch abortions as the ideal solution to parents for demanding teenyboppers who wanted the far more socially acceptable but double the price Sony of that size in their rooms. I had a mate who got one for his birthday mid 80's and 30 years on he's still not recovered from the trauma it caused him, that is how crap they were!

Like I don't even think that the more upmarket Laskys chain even sold Akai gear back then but I may be wrong so don't quote me as gospel on that one but Laskys had far higher end electronics compared to your Rumbelows et al.

I have measured the weight on a couple of these cheap turntables.. if you are okay with 8 grams of force, go for it! Realisticaly to buy an entry turntable you are looking at minimum 100 pounds.

Laskys, I haven't heard that name in ages. It was not what I would call a high end store, but I suppose compared to Rumbelows it was. I remember when I was a kid I would walk down Tottenham Court Rd in London's West End and go into all of the quality audio shops. The best place from memory was Lion House jammed packed full of high end quality equipment which had the most amazing speaker rooms in one of the basement floors. I went there last week and sadly even the Sony store no longer exists.

I remember finding what I was looking to buy and then going into the many Asian owned stores and asking them for the best price possible. They would always be able to beat the price and came back with the goods the same day.

Yeah I should really have said 'slightly more upmarket' :grin: but you get my drift, I think Akai was consigned to cheaper end of the the electronic retailer spectrum.

Yep Tottenham Court Road was always AV Central, used to bowl up there to go Adidas Connection and nigh on every shop was electrical with the bulk of it tellies, videos and hi-fi rather than household domestic stuff, not been down that way for years so no idea if it's still the same now.

I've been using an Audio Technica AT-LP60 for the last 8 months pretty much daily and it's going well. £99 on Amazon at present. It's my first ever turntable and I am not an audiophile.

With regards to pops and clicks due to dirt comment by someone, in bars in Dusseldorf, maybe elsewhere, I dont know, they used to put water on the LP and it played fine. Not sure about the H&S aspect with that???? Anyone else familiar with that?
Made myself look it up :-vinylengine.com/tur…360

Dunno but water is full of minerals and other particles. Doesn't seem intuitive to put that where a stylus would notice. There are anti-static washes available for record cleaning if yours is particularly grubby.

cleaning records with liquids and letting them dry is fine if done right, but playing wet will push the dirt deeper into the grooves. there's probably other possible issues in relation to the fact you have water around electric devices. i doubt it would stop the issue of dirt being melted into the groove. here's an article about the needle temperature that includes a comment about a guy who worked in record production (making the vinly as opposed to shouting at musicians)


forums.linn.co.uk/bb/…073

"Records are made from a polyvinyl chloride/polyvinyl acetate copolymer at 90/10 mix roughly and its melting point is between 110 and 120 degrees centigrade. I was a record production and development chemist at EMI for 6 years and mucked around with various record mixtures. The stylus does indeed 'melt' the plastic at a macro level, the plastic immediately resetting itself back to where it was: there would be no noticeable degradation of the record in the short term but repeated playing, especially the heavy modulated grooves of the record, will over thousands of playing, eventually give a degradation that is discernable. Nowt to worry about in the short term though: dust is probably a greater enemy as is plasticiser migration from record inner sleeves. "

The article I refer to in my original comment seems to answer most of the comments from that article, and the one before yours. I suppose if you have a valuable collection, rather than run of the mill stuff, not to be attempted lightly, but it is an interesting path to try.

For most people it probably makes more sense to replace your vinyl with cheap SH CDs (use The Cameliser to monitor prices) and rip copies with free software like EAC.
This only really makes sense if you've got music on vinyl that isn't available in a digital format.

I

If you are even thinking of ripping your vinyl to digital format, there's no way you'd go for lossy MP3.

The model in that picture wasn't even sold on its own. It was part of a boombox; in the early 1980s there was a fad among the Japanese manufacturers to include a removable cassette deck as part of the system.

These were generally much larger and heavier, and better quality than any of the £100 standalone personal stereos, as they contained a full-size mechanism.

... As you'd know as you were around then! :smile:

Of course anyone who knew what they were talking about would not the dual flywheel design of this particular unit; cheap and nasty it is most certainly not.

You do realise my actual line was "weren't at all decent" don't you? Erm you're now the second gallant knight defending Maid Akai's honour whacking that "cheap and nasty" quote on me when it was a totally different contributor to this thread!

Frankly it doesn't really matter anyway because as far as the peer pressure verdict went back then, they was indeed very cheap and nasty. So carry on to feel free to go as anorak as you wish about a model I BELIEVE was the Argos special because yeah I was about then, thus I know the types to have Akai personal stereos were also the types whose folks bought them Jekyll tut like 'Marahs' and 'Tarahs' rather than the genuine must have regulation school attire of the day Farahs.

I am beginning to get this feeling that anyone of a certain age defending the Akai brand with such passion and vigour would invariably turn out to be the very same people who was palmed off with with their big brother's(or even sister's) hand-me-down Green Flash for PE rather than getting a nice crisp new pair of Nike Wimbledons.

Anyway I should really not descend to responding to petty swipes with more petty swipes but it was what it was back then and it is what it is now, speaking of which......nine years on here yet not even one solitary deal, like really? (_;)

Will probably just collect dust like the vinyl discs if bought

Depends why you're ripping it - if it's to listen on a portable device or in the car then MP3 makes sense.
If you're looking for audiophile quality you wouldn't be using a £19.99 turntable.

For those of us who already have a turntable and amp - is there an easy way to connect it to a laptop and use it to rip vinyl to MP3?

The back of my pre and power amps look like this (so I'm guessing I could use output 2 on the pre-amp or the line out on the power amp):

something like this will do the trick

amazon.co.uk/Beh…YZ0

it depends on your budget but there are a number of alternatives. just google usb phono preamp. richer sounds have some too, and amazon have others. once you've found one you like the look off, google and check ebay for the best price. I have the model above and it works fine. another option is if you have an amp and turntable setup, is to use a standalone cd or dvd recorder. I used a standalone cd recorder for my first rips in the 90s before multi media pc's became affordable

Think you might have replied to the wrong person there.

Yep well spotted indeed I did, that was of course intended for jasejames so my sincerest apologies to atari001.

I shall retire for the night with a bright red face now X)

Argos never stocked Akai stuff, it was wayyy too high end for them.

It's amazing how a deal on here can bring out the blowhards, naysayers, self professed 'experts'
Of course anyone who knew what they were talking about....
‌ :neutral_face:
It is what it is - A turntable reduced from £99.99 to £19.99
Have some heat OP

I think the point for some is that those who don't know any better may be making a bad choice, so those who know a bit about these things are trying to help people avoid those choices. in life some people know about some stuff and not about others. so I may not have a clue if I want to buy an iron or hoover or something like that, whilst other may chip in and say it's a waste of time spending £30 on a particular model even if it's got £100 off, it's a waste of time and may knacker your clothes or carpet, but a £40 one may do a great job

I'm still not sure if awai or akai or whatever was the good or bad brand. I remember upgrading from a sashio Walkman to a nice red autoreverse with 3 band equaliser and that may have been akaii or awaii or even sanyo. the sony pro Walkman blew them all away when I finally got enough money to get one second hand

" those who don't know any better " - my point proven.

You think too much. A bad choice for £20. Really?
And do you really think the brand name will be of any relevance nearly 20 years on?
Tell that to Wharfdale, Toshiba, Hitachi, Technics etc etc

yes, I think it's a bad choice for £20 as it can permanently damage records, which at some point may end up in the second hand market so other people end up getting damaged copies of stuff because someone bought this

the name is irrelevant.

Just have to jump in here - it's a bad choice for £20 so if anyone had bought it while it was listed at £99 (before it was reduced) what kind of choice would it have been then?

I know we get consistently ripped off in Britain so is this proving that? As in was it only worth £20 BEFORE it was discounted? How do we know? :smile:

probably as the 1978 technics 1210 mk2 are poo

So by that logic you'd have to vote hot on a 100 quid DIY Euthanasia kit reduced to a score too :unamused:

Is that because of the price, or because you actually know this particular turntable?

Have you measured this model?

No vinyl lover is going to buy one of these. They are designed for people wanting to dump their old vinyl so I would not worry too much. I have a rega planar myself.

Neither. See my earlier comments that explain why.

It's a bad choice regardless of price.

Think ink about it this way, would a £200 hair dryer be a bargain at £20 if it permanently damaged your hair when using it?

So you do not know this turntable have never used it and do not know what the stylus is and you are stating categorically that it is a bad choice. You seem to assume that because the price is low, that the item is bad. I can state quite happily that I have been extremely impressed with many low-priced items that are better than other higher-priced similar items. Rather odd that you assume the worst case scenario and despite ignorance state it as fact. In addition, whilst it may be a bad choice for you, it may be a great choice for others.

Exactly! Perfect for the use for which it was designed,
What a small world it is - amazing that of all the quality decks in the World you and I both have Rega Planars!

what you say is incorrect.

the item is bad due to the design of the product, which will damage the items the product is designed to play

being open minded, it's true to say that cheaper products can potentially be as good as or better, or worse than more expensive products, however that has little relevance to the facts being discussed here. I will often use a much cheaper alternative product to save money, but not if the alternative has side effects that I don't want, especially if that means it will damage another item. how can you consider an item that causes permanent damage to other items to be a "great choice"?

as opposed to ignorance, it's knowledge about these type of products that means I can state categorically it's a bad choice because it will damage the records that are played on it. who wants to buy a product that causes unwanted or unintended damage to the items it's designed to be used with, and consider that a "great choice"?

if you read through the thread you will see myself and others explaining the technicalities of why this item is a bad choice, and I haven't noticed anyone saying it's because of the type of stylus, and you appear to be overlooking that information and summarising that people are simply putting the item down because of price, as opposed to the facts regarding the design and functionality

The facts are that you have not ever seen or used this machine and do not know whether it will cause any more damage that any other given machine. You are guessing that it will and purporting that guesswork as fact. All record players damage the vinyl and an expensive turntable with a poorly adjusted arm or a poor/worn stylus will also do the same. The item is designed for people to convert their old vinyl to wav/mp3 it is not designed as a high-end audiophile device. I am sure that anybody can read the reviews and do their research and make up their own minds. For most people this device will be just fine for the purpose intended. for 5% of people for whom vinyl is the only way to listen to music, it will not.

this is not true. in fact you are actually doing what you incorrectly state I'm doing. I'd bet you haven't bought and used this item yourself and made any kind of accurate tests before and after playing a record to determine the damage caused, yet you seem intent on suggesting the item is fine for others to use, yet you don't use it yourself

it's clear you disagree with what I have to say. I think people can read this thread and make their own minds up what to do. I don't think the device is fine for anyone to use for the purpose intended, thus the words of advice from myself, and others to make that point

This will have the same needle/ cardridge as most in the 0 to £100 range and so will probably not cause any more damage than most.

I have not stated that this model is good or bad. You have done so. That is the difference.

I have a proJect Carbon RPM 9 with an Ortofon Blue :smile:

Mate I have measured 8 grams in a cheap crosley.. there are reports up to 12 grams. On top of that the needle is crap quality. I wouldn't do 1 pass with it. Only if that would be the last time I would want to hear it! :smile:

Whicj may well be the case for the people likely to be buying these to transfer their vinyl to mp3 or wav

‌ :dizzy_face:‌ :grin:

True, but for the initial rip, IMO, you need to capture it lossless for your archives. You can then convert and mess about with that rip as much as you like for other devices. And you are right, you definitely wouldn't use a £19.99 turntable!

It is £19.99 because it has been drastically reduced. That it is why it is a hot deal. It was originally priced above many other similar devices so was it better than those then?