How Direct Drive Turntables Work! Ft. the Crosley C200! 

A benefit of having a direct drive turntable is that you never have to buy belts. Great vid Record-ology dude, I enjoyed it much.

When the platter 'rang', did you dub a bit of Gregorian monk chant in there, or am I just hearing things? 🤣

Many thanks again for another excellent video. I always enjoy your obvious enthusiasm.

Thanks for the look inside the Crosley C200. It looks like it was well designed and could be easily serviced and repaired.

I find the new turntables to be interesting and look fine but I'm so happy I bought 80's turntables. belt drive(Garrard GT25ap) and one direct drive (Technics SLQD33)

2:26 Cogging is common with motors, but it depends on the motor design. Not all motors are subject to cogging. For a motor design that isn't subject to cogging, the rumble comes from the bearings only.

Great video, record-ology! You're correct about the Technics direct drive being different, but the motor is not completely in the platter, just the magnets. The coils are still on a circuit board in the turntable plinth, a weird approach. I've also seen turntables that have a circle with notches under the platter and an optical sensor to detect and control the speed 😀

Thanks! Like always

A third type of turntable drive was idler drive, commonly found on vintage turntables from the 1940s to 70s. It used a rubber tired intermediate wheel, instead of a belt, between the motor shaft (usually an AC synchronous induction motor, but later just a JYK DC motor) and the sub platter. These were high torque, as required to operate the automatic changer mechanisms of the day. One of the failings of the Crosley Stack-O-Matic was it was a belt drive, instead of an idler drive like the original BSR units it tried to replicate. Some vintage machines actually had separate drives for playing and changing records.

Ich habe, was ich schon mehrfach erwähnt habe, einen 1977er WEGA PS55 Direktantriebs-Plattenspieler. Ich habe mehrfach Riemenantriebs-Plattenspieler, 1byone, Rega, Pro-Ject, AT, TEAC, Sony und andere ausprobiert! Sie sind alle, mehr oder weniger, gut! An den alten WEGA reichen sie aber nur annähernd!

Thanks for using a little of "An Occasional Man" from the Laura Ainsworth "Top Shelf" album! I agree, it's the perfect thing for testing a turntable. I was thinking of you because I was at an estate sale yesterday where I paid $125 for an entire closet full of jazz/big band/easy listening CDs and a big box of LPs, including a couple dozen of the Bluebird "Complete" series on various big bands. My car is filled with CDs and albums, and before I can unload them, I have to figure out where they're going to go. I had to leave behind a ton of albums, including lots of artists like Chet Atkins and several stacks of Readers Digest type box sets of Bing Crosby, hits of various eras, etc. Sad to say, every other collector in town had already picked through the collection, and this was what they left behind. They called me because they figured I would actually be interested in this great music that nobody else wanted. Sad.

Great Video. Thank you very much. At 10:30 I had to laugh very much. You also have the right kind of Humor.😂

when you had it opened, couldn't make out the trim positions in the guts of the unit that corresponded with the holes in the base cover

Belts can stretch, causing a variation in speed. I prefer direct drive and recommend the AT-LP120.

Ok I just acquired one of these units. I plugged it into my recording rig and noticed the drive noise right away. Belt drive sounds more my speed I think. My goal is to transfer records into my daw, for further shenanigans. It has to be clean though.

Thank you to dissection this turntable for us. How about the specification (S/N ratio , wow & flowter......) of C200?

I'm a big fan of your content especially the way you consider the lower end of the market and give lots of good advice about the practical, real-world differences between different turntable models for people getting into vinyl. So I offer the following in the spirit of constructive criticism and hope it's received in that way too. While I agree that most of the differences between a well designed belt and direct drive are unlikely to be audible I was a disappointed by some of the supposed drawbacks of direct drive turntables and sonic superiority of belt drive which you cited in this video. These have long since been debunked, but continue to be pushed by the "audiophile" high end manufacturers as misinformation to explain away the inherent inferiority and obsolescence of the belt drive system which they continue to use. Though you do partially row back on some of those points in the tear down section I still think they're worth addressing. Direct drive and quartz lock were developed in the 70s by Japanese companies to produce turntables with objectively better performance than belt or idler drive. This was a time when Japan was a world leader in audio technology and electronics and pulling away from Europe and US. DJing didn't exist when direct drive was invented - this technology was originally brought to market because it was sonically better. The superior performance of direct drive can and has been objectively and repeatedly measured and proven in many independent third party tests. Direct drive, especially with quartz lock, outperforms belt drive in terms of signal to noise ratio, wow and flutter and the effects of voltage and temperature fluctuation, the key parameters of a drive system. To address the supposed drawbacks you raised: "Cogging" was completely eliminated by coreless motor designs as early as the 70s and not just in high end products - JVC had coreless motors across their whole consumer range. If "herky jerky" sound is a worry, the comparatively terrible wow and flutter performance of belt drive should be a major concern, though that is also rarely audible in normal circumstances. "Motor noise" of direct drive Mechanical noise in a direct drive system is entirely derived from the quality of the bearing, just like a belt drive system. Unlike a belt drive system where a separate motor is whizzing away creating additional noise and vibration, which is then partially transmitted to the belt whose elasticity also introduces speed errors, a direct drive motor is just efficiently converting electromagnetic energy straight into kinetic energy of the platter spinning on the single bearing. I think this might have been your realisation once you'd taken the thing apart and seen the motor? "Speed variation" of direct drive Direct drive turntables, especially quartz locked, have indisputably better measured wow and flutter and speed drift performance than belt drive. As others have mentioned in the comments another big advantage of direct drive is no deterioration in performance as the primitive rubber belt stretches and rots. In my opinion, the reason we no longer see many direct drive turntables with coreless motors and quartz lock in the consumer market isn't because they're inferior, it's because they are relatively high tech products which depended on economies of scale to produce. When consumer demand for vinyl dried up, those economies of scale no longer existed. With the rise of CD, the market-leading high tech Japanese manufacturers discontinued turntables and moved on. The exception was Technics which could continue to make a profit in the DJ market which it dominated and which required direct drive. Even that market was too small for Technics' direct drive turntables to be viable, hence the discontinuation of the SL-1200 in 2010. That left only the niche "audiophile" turntable manufacturers with their small volume, beautiful, but highly inefficiently manufactured products which used the technically inferior but simpler belt drive technology. I say all this because I started in vinyl by buying a Pro-ject Debut Carbon a few years back mistakenly believing it was a high tech product with its modern design and fancy carbon tone arm. And then I realised its peformance is laughably bad compared to a JVC quartz locked direct drive turntable from the 80s which I picked up on a whim at a thrift store for $20...

22:55 I'm sorry, but that's far from the truth... The Reloop RP7000MK2 are very popular DJ turntables and are less than 500 bucks. However, to mix, you'd need a pair, so that brings it close to a thousand dollars.

Always a joy to see you review stuff!

I’ll take a quartz-locked direct-drive unit before anything, but don’t front on idler drive, especially those on the classic Duals. Peace.

This direct drive from Crosley it's absolutely identic to my technisat lp300.

( community comments welcomed!!!! ) Any word if you're going to produce/selling aluminum 45ers with your logo? I would LOVE, blessed even to be able to buy/own one. I've learnt allot watching you and vwestlife. I prefer you but I'm curiously upgrading my c6b. So far I've added these upgrades. Rubber 3mm platter mat. LP Gear 250 stylus(had to let it break in, now I hear the difference) Metal pointed feet (awesome for isolation) ----what I'm looking into---- Project/rega/angel horns Acrilic platter. Looking into making my own pro-ject string/wire and weight anti-skate. Could the last one be done? I really really like this table and upgrading it is a blast !!!!!!

What in the world is making that sound at 10:34?

I own a Audio Technica LP120X-BT and the other day I had the platter spinning and stop it completely with my hand about 3-4 times, I have no idea why I did this but it still works just fine and I was just wondering if it will be okay in the future?

built better than I thought it was going to be

What do you think of the new Monoprice Monolith turntables? They start from $199.99 to $249.99. They look nice. Would be an cool review as well.

Record-ology get a speaker magnet for loose screws.

Direct drive all the way for me. I've owned several belt driven models and the records always sounded like they were dragging. Granted these were cheapo end of the line belt drives of the 90s. It left a bad taste in my mouth for belt driven turntables. Splurged on a Audio Technica 120 records sounded like they did when I was a kid.

Hello! I came here from your Victrola video. My record won't spin when I put the needle above it... I just got it for Christmas and am just now using it. I am a complete newbie to this stuff. Is there any way you could help me fix it? I can hear the motor going, but nothing else is happening. It is plugged in and the light is on. The setting is set to phono. Please, anything can help.

Belt drive turntables are WAY cheaper to make.

Merci pour l'info. excuse moi pour l'info je possède une lenco du même genre que la crosley et c'est un l 400bk en direct drive aussi tu devrais t'en procurer une et la comparer ces une lenco l400bk direct drive.meci salut

just curious, cuz I don't know much about this subject, but i have direct-drive turntable from Realisitic (no longer in existence I believe) that I bought in 1980. it has a strobe with variable speed adjustment, anti-skate and tone arm weight adjustment and the original cartridge. it is 2 speed and in very good shape. the worst thing about it is of course the 42 yr old dust cover. is it worth anything other than maybe a hundred dollars if that? it is VERY much like the Realistic Lab 395 that i have seen reviewed on RU-vid.

LIKE number 10 and back again. :)

Do you think that weight of the TT makes a difference?

High end very expensive turntables are belt drive too. Very informative video! 👍

They sell their turntables all over the world and in the majority of the countries that they sell to there is no real need for an adapter as there's no big hole in their 7 inch pressings. The USA is but one of many many countries in a global market, it's not cost effective to put anything more than just the bare minimum in the box when it comes to the 45 adapter as most buyers outside of the USA won't have a need for it. It's there for "just in case".

These turntables are all coming from a same factory maybe Hanpin ??? all seem to have Hanpin style motors maybe even same stuff that Audio Technika is using seen these sold under like 4 different brands Fun Generation, dual, lenco, American Audio etc. colors and cardridges used make the difference mostly. Cheapest of them being the Fun Generation TT 1201 that's (199 €) at the moment and probably the same product than Dual DTJ 301-1 USB (269 €) all sold BY Thomann in europe. I would call these the best entrylevel players around nowdays, if vintage is not an option. Reloop RP 4000 MK2 (329 €) has Speeds (RPM): 33 1/3 - 45 - 78 and a better tonearm system.

I very nearly bought the direct-driven *Audio Technica AT-LP5X,* with its wonderful 70s appearance and J-shaped tonearm. Instead I went for the *Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Evo,* on the basis of its lower wow and flutter rating (0.18%, versus 0.2% for the AT model). Astonishingly, *Rega* permit a W&F rating of up to 0.3%! An untrained ear will pick up on that! My Pro-Ject review: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MyuOI14-rBw.html