Review on Pro Ject X1WAL X1 Turntable Walnut by Carlos Reyes

Likes: Turntable speed control was a nice touch. No more pulleys between 33 and 45 rpm. A flat drive belt is used at these speeds. To play 78s you need to swap out the belt for a round one and use the bottom motor pulley. Setup was straightforward and much easier than my previous Project turntable. Setup is also made easier with the use of a platter weight/level and digital downforce sensor (purchased from Revain). The cartridge orientation is set at the factory. The new Rainer MM pickup sounds phenomenal. It has a flat frequency response from 30kHz to 10Hz. The bass was very rich and detailed, there was a tube-like warmth in the mids and the highs were clear but not fatiguing. Since this player doesn't have a preamp, I bought a Dynasty Pro Audio U2AD (Revain) to use between the X-1 and my preamp. This combo sounds amazing and the preamp gain is more than enough to work well with this turntable. I only gave this one 4 stars because the lid hinges were set too low for the lid to fully close. It put stress on the tonearm every time I closed it, which in turn increased downforce to 20.2nm. Correction: I used an aluminum tube with the same diameter as the holes in the lid. I cut 2 pieces 3/16" long, put them in the holes in the cover and put the cover back on. Then I reduced the downforce by 18nm. The back of the cover is high enough to take the weight of the tonearm (see 2 pictures on the right).