Review on Sony PS-LX250H Automatic Belt-Drive Turntable (No Longer Manufactured) by Gustavo Mathew

Picked up my order in the post today, brought it home and unpacked it and would like to share some thoughts on my first experience. Some assembly is required first. The output is this: if you're connecting to a system with PHONO inputs turn the EQ switch off, if you're connecting to the AUX inputs (which most people probably will be) turn the EQ on -switch on. It is necessary to install a cast aluminum pulley and pull the drive belt over the drive spindle. And then throw it on a rubber mat on top of the plate. They have a nice piece of red ribbon you can use to tension the drive belt. In fact, this is all very easy to do. The instruction manual shows how to attach the dust cover, but it was already attached to the device I received. Okay, now I've assembled it and connected the power cord. Now to attach it to my "system". Right now I'm connecting the player to my old computer so I can back up some of my old vinyl records to CD. The turntable comes with standard R/L RCA plugs, so I needed an adapter cable with a 1/8" stereo plug on one end and two RCA sockets. Luckily, one of them ended up in my trash drawer. /8" to the LINE-IN jack of my computer's sound card and the cinch connectors are connected to each other. Unfortunately, the adapter cable I have doesn't label which channel is right and which is left, so I'm going to go ahead and guess later if I was right. The player has very simple controls consisting of four buttons on the front - speed selection 33/45, start, stop, up/down. On the top of the deck there is another switch for selecting the record size 17/30. Only one record can be played at a time. Be sure to also lift the protective cover of the stylus gently onto the platter and then pressed the start button, rotated, the stylus went up and moved to the beginning of the re-encoded and gently fell back into place, and the record was Played heads up - the album just didn't sound right - it sounded on very high settings and they were right, but it still felt a bit too harsh. I stopped the recording and turned on another - it still sounded weird to me. Thought it might be cheap computer speakers so tried a pair of headphones - same sound. The best guess I could come up with is that the player played too fast. Not as fast as 45, but still fast enough to make playback sound weird. I stopped recording, turned everything off, disassembled the player and checked if I missed a speed setting - no. I put everything back together and tried pressing and releasing the speed controller several times. After doing this, the player now seems to be playing at the correct speed. Not exactly sure what made the difference - re-attaching the drive belt or removing the kinks in the speed control knob. So far I've played several albums and now the device looks good. I'm only giving this unit four stars as I've had a few minor issues with the unit but I would recommend it to anyone looking to get a new low cost turntable. But be careful, some assembly is required.