Sansui Auto-Reverse Turntable - Closing the drawer on a HiFi legend 

“It’s like a Crosley cosplaying as a Sansui” - best line in the entire video!

The membrane buttons were a pretty good sign that the quality wasn't going to be good. Cutting costs on buttons says it all. Another great video Matt.

I'm A Sansui collector stereo gear myself(From their tube gear to the even cheap 80's plastic ones),and I was so enjoyed by your review on this turntable.that brand had and have so many fans around the world,you can see it on the Sansui forum at Audiokarma and on the many fan groups that it have on facebook,not any other stereo company had so much fans and lovers.

Imagine someone trolling techmoan by donating a laser turntable

Techmoan HQ ... the only place where you'll find more record players than actual records :-)

laser record players pretty much serve their entire purpose in archives, reading discs that can't be risked putting stylus to medium.

Forget about Sansui, why are you bothering with your everyday crap turntable when you could be using a laser turntable. I forget the name of it, I think it's ELP or something like that. I hear the sound quality is absolutely stunning. Also, have you tried replacing the caps on the Sansui? I'm sure replacing the caps would be very helpful. You're welcome for those protips, someone who isn't a channel regular would just leave you in the dark.

Having one player on one channel and the other on the other is the best way to demonstrate the difference IMO. So thanks for this great and clear demonstration!

I love my vintage Sansui amps and preamps and integrated amps. The AU7900, 717 and the CA2000 along with the BA3000 is hard to beat.

In my memory I equated Sansui with being good quality but now I know what happened. I had a Sansui TV made in Turkey in 2005 and it only lasted 4 years before it ceased functioning with a loud buzz. Thanks for the video, most interesting.

I'm still proud to own my Sansui C77 and B77 amp & pre-amp. The turntable is long gone and the tuner appears to have gone missing, however. Hmmmm. I'm almost motivated to start checking attics and closets.

OK, you had me the Kool G Rap and Polo - Road to the Riches limited colour vinyl!! What!!! I had forgotten everything else I had just watched up until that point!

I remember TEAC as the company that made cheap tat. It's a shame though, as they had some good gear too.

Well, that explains a few things. I bought a new Sansui (in about 1990) "stacked system" that came in one big chunk, I had always heard how great they were so I thought oh well as long as it sounds good. It didn't have a turntable. It had a tape deck, receiver, and cd player, it actually sounded okay (not great) and it had a one year warranty...it melted down on week 53! I had kept the receipt and yes 1 year and 1 week. I thought everybody was crazy to tell me they were great but everyone I talked to had had or knew of one of the 70's models. Great video!!

I almost bought one of these things and thanks to your video i saved myself money and a headache. Thanks!

I can think of a number of issues trying to play even slightly warped vinyl records upside-down however it was a cool idea. Some kind of anti dust cleaning system should've been an essential part in those.

Just bought my 15th Nakamichi deck and also an Akai reel to reel. Awesome quality made to last forever.

My first Sansui receiver, late 70's or early 80's G-something... ...fond memories indeed. ..

Hello Mat and everybody else, I came home two hours ago with exactly this Sansui turntable which I bought three days ago for CHF 420 out of curiosity after watching Mat's former Sharp video... record players are definitely not made to be sent by courier so I picked it up myself. Now I wanted to see what others have to say about this device and I just realized that Techmoan (probably not only my personal hero of what patience is concerned!) made a video yesterday... what a coincidence! :-) - when I saw the final verdict, I was rather scared, I would have thrown my money out the window... And now I listen to an LP and record it at the same time on my Revox B215. Sorry, but I'm thrilled about the quality. I will digitize it now and check the runtimes. Mat, you're right about the "record player-gear-quality" from the mid 80's (when CD players slowly became affordable) but as usual it also depends on the ability of the seller or his technician of these old devices to repair them. My turntable is real fun... now ask me again in two weeks! :-) Best regards Daniel

GLEICHLAUFSCHWANKUNG! What a word 🍄

*Dieser Plattenspieler ist wirklich einzigartig!*

I gave my old Sansui SR222 turntable to friend a few years ago......haven't seen or heard from him in years & that turntable is currently going for £190..... DOH! I'd heard Sansui had died as a quality brand....but stunned to hear Nakamichi have gone the same way

I think ELP (turntables) did have some sort of good use besides a new, innovative way of listening to records: they were used to create new masters for albums in which their original masters have been lost or destroyed. A Japanese funk/pop band known as Piper recently had their first four albums reissued on CD, and a new Laser vinyl Master (LvM) was created for each album. I listened to a few samples from each album, and honestly they don’t sound half bad.

That music sounded really cool when you played the same record on the two different TT's!!!

there was a 3d acoustic laser system developed to read vinyl that doesn't care about dust at all.. however the laser assembly and optics alone was over $400 000 and I don't know if it was ever incorporated into any product

Such a shame that Sansui went downhill. I’ve got a pair of SP-2000s for my setup that sound absolutely amazing! They really knew what they were doing from the late 60’s to early 80’s!

hahaha, that stereo speed comparison made me laugh!!! hahahahahaha, I don't know why but it sounded very funny!.

Hey Matt.. Nice video as allways.. I remember that my dad used to own a Sansui stereo when I was a little boy.. I think he bought it around 1980, but i think it was from the seventys.. I remember seeing pictures of my self sitting in front of it, listning to a record by a Danish artist named Kim Larsen and I still own that very same record today.. Just a small story for your collection :)

"This is gonna mess up headphone users"... you were so right... what a great and funny idea... !!! Greetings from Germany :-)

10:53 - Techmoan but he forgot to ejewwex his quaderney

I read this and immediately thought it was a joke like dvd rewinder

if you want to get the best out of Sansui vintage amp, make sure the model number starts with "AU." if it starts with just an "A," it's just a so-so quality unless you heavily modified it, which is not money-, time-, nor sonic-wise

It's sad that Sansui, Nakamichi and Akai are not as good as they use to be. Thank you for the Video..

hi techmoen,great video,interesting and funny,i am 100 percent cd/owner/ listener,but found the video very informing,thanks,roterdam.

I really like the bit with the same music playing at different speeds in my ears. Probably a good way to get round copyright detection. I could compensate by adjusting the audio input speed to one half of my brain anyway.

I own 3 SONY GDM-FW900 CRT monitors, which are commonly considered the best CRT screens ever made. I think it would be great to make a good video about that monster. (Ok, it´s no audio gear but anyway).

I have the same technics, it's fantastic and simple, only problem is mine has slot of scratches on the lid, but once I swapped the stylus, there is nothing functionally wrong with it :)

I love that outro

Kudos for The Residents track you played ;)

hey, great remix. had no idea you were a remixer.

Mid-80s into the 90s was a grim time for many once proud companies. The concept of "value engineering" replacing traditional function and form before cost engineering. Instead of focusing on their traditional established markets, so many tried to cash in on the low cost high volume market. Maybe it was inevitable but now we just seem to be awash with so much techno-junk.

So glad I got up early just in time to see this pop up in my notifications! 👍

@Techmoan: I think the reason why the auto reverse turn table sound slow, it his because it gets converted to digital audio signal then back to analog through the speaker, since it goes to digital it gets auto compress, it sound slow since it reach your ears faster, while the one that sound fast, his analog to analog, and it his not compress, so it take more time for all the sound wave to reach your ears, so it will sound fast, I even test it myself, I have the exact same album one on a CD, and one on Vynall record, I play the CD version first, then I played the Vynall version on a Crossly and it sounded faster on the Crossly, and the Crossly his playing at the correct rotation speed.

11:03 OK I'm gonna make this messed up music clip as my default ring tone.

You know you're serious when you have a secondary turntable.

Playing those two tracks simultaneously was probably the worst idea you've ever had. My brain hurts.

I had a 'Nakamichi' auto reverse cassette player, back in the day!

As an audio/videophile the words "simple and elegant" say it all. Most things with a laser, lots of cheap wiring and plastic, and excessively complicated items should ideally be avoided if you want quality and low maintenance. Why reinvent the wheel? Manual turntables have existed for how long? And how many of these fancy reinventions of the turntable have survived ? Give Techmoan a break, if he thought enough of a laser turntable he would probably be the first to make a video on it. Most audiophiles think nothing of the laser table either, if they did, it would be more widespread and cheaper. It's an opinion and I feel that some audiophiles out there forget to give creators like Techmoan and others the respect to express his opinion and decide what is good for his channel. It's fine to agree to disagree, but give him the respect he deserves for deciding against something he may not want.

I really want to see a video on that laser turntable.

Nice to hear Won't Get Fooled Again in a video! Fantastic as always! I have something you might be interested in, how is best to contact you?

"This is gonna mess up headphone users..." Me, using a phone with stereo speakers: *basically crying from how messed up it sounds*

Sansui amps are killer!

I found the ultimate solution to all turntable problem. Get yourself a CD player.

Please do a video of your Pioneer SX 3600 and the SX 3000 line of flouroscan receivers. Thanks!

The irony is that after seeing Sansui go down the toilet the Chinese didn't rebrand it when they brought it back. For that kind of shoddy quality I could find better CHOP SUEY without even looking hard. You really should review the TEAC TN-570. It's a turntable, it's new, it has modern features, and when paired with a VM760SLC you will hear records played back like never before.

Around the mid-90's my parents had a whole NEC-branded setup: stereo, cassette, turntable... it was a gift they got for their marriage at the start of the decade, and that setup was already 2 years old... sounded magnificent, even when we had to change some of the cones with makeshift ones. Now I see NEC on any modern audio equipment and all I can say is they sound like a fat man farted into a rather short brass tuba: crackly, sloppy, noisy... the peak limiter was pretty much the ONLY state the analyzer would stay on. A disgrace.

While the story of the downfall of "Sansui" was sad, it makes sense - HiFi is a small niche market. Yes, I do love music, but hardly any of my headphones has ever cost over 20-35 euros (usually I choose ones for 16-20, as I know they will not live forever), my PC speakers with a subwoofer cost 60 euros (with a discount), and my car has original factory speakers with some no-name audio from AliExpress for 16 euros, playing tracks from my phone over Blutooth that replaced original 25 year old Blaupunkt, since it started to chew on cassettes..

I think 10:42 is what you hear on the elevator to hell

Could you review a Bumpbox? I just recently was at a campfire and this guy had one and I've never heard of them before, but I'm totally looking into getting one after hearing it. It's like the modern day Boombox.

Timing related electronic issues are usually due to failed/failing electrolytic capacitors...

Anyone else just noticing the Xbox One X console on the cabinet for the first time? I must've thought it was just another home A/V component!

Ahh just like Akai, selling £20 DVD players in B&M's. Even many Energizer products are branded under license.

Another really great video! Thanks! Why anyone would want anything but digital (except for kicks) seems rather dim to me. OK, gals, the world has gone binary. We who revel in our tens of thousands of tracks tucked neatly away, always ready and able to play as if they had never been played before shall watch as you trip over your drinks and hit your head on the pointy edge of a turntable. So sorry.

this new technology is genius, i love the future

Some hippy in Vermont has a laser turntable?? Sounds suspect

Sharp RP107 and RP117 are autoreverse too.

Flippin Eck.. Gotta go make coffee.. BRB...Flippn Eck, had to Fix(bodge) a Leaking Water pipe Just for a Cup a Coffee 😎

Techmoan you should review some technics turntables sl-7, sl-10 or sl-15 or the technics discman sl-xp5, or sl-xp7 please

Great vid as always but the audio levels are wonky.

Não vai pegar, o charme é ver o disco girar, mudar de faixa manualmente, o gostoso é interagir com a pick up.

i still have the rest of the midi system designed to stack on this.

Ah! That’s interesting! Growing up in the 80’s I always associated Sansui as plastic rubbish that you got from Dixon’s or Curry’s. I never realised I was witnessing the start of the quality slide from the 70’s. Shame really.

I own the Pioneer shown on video!!

A top-loading drawer is all very well BUT -- how are you going to clean the record?

$15-$20,000 for a TURNTABLE. RIDICULOUS.

I guess I was too young to experience quality sansui...also sad to see what happened to nakamichi =(

What a pitty It will never be available in Brazil.

Depressing example of "They don't make them like this anymore."

China, where old brand names go to retire only to find they are being turned back out on the street for the price of a Happy Meal.😅

Kodak and Polaroid are suffering the same branding abomination

listened to the speed comparison, realised my speaker channels were flipped. The channel that keeps on giving. Thanks Matt.

6:19 "And if I had that kind of money lying around, I could think much better ways to spend it." Like having a full show with puppets?

Sad to see Nakamichi on the list also. They made some of the best cassette decks ever. I own 2 in perfect working order and they sound wonderful, something about the tone they give to recordings that's hard to beat. Sad to see once great companies go down.

The separated channels speed comparison is almost pluffnub worthy

10:45 Anybody else thinks this sounds like a grade school band recital? ;) Sad about Sansui's ending. There are an awful lot of very recognizable brand names now owned by "somebody else" that get plastered on cheap imported junk. Sad endings for once proud companies.

I used to laugh and shake my head when my Grandpap would say, “They don’t make them like they used to...”

So there's still the most straightforward option of having a drawer loading turntable: A top loader mounted on a pull-out shelf.

I am wearing headphones, that speed comparison had me laughing like a madman. But it was a bit sad really

So actually the Sharp turntable in the end was on par or better one than this Samsui? Between 1970 and 1980's also Sharp made top level hi-fi equipment.

next time on techmoan a fan sent me a laser turntable!

I have a Sansui A-60 and the sound sometimes disappears, one speaker most the times. If I turn it off and back on I can hear both speakers again. I tried all the possible inputs, it's the same. Also, changing the input selector sometimes fixes it too. The caps all look great, even measured some. I wonder, what could it be? It can work well for some weeks, or it can fail repeatedly, seemly at random. It's despairing.

Good review, alas a sad ending.

something I love about Techmoan is he fits the perfect niche that "How It's Made" Fit when I was a child. I didn't think I was gonna learn about old turntables an hour ago, yet here I am. It's perfect wind down content.

I was surprised to see you discuss this issue as thought I was one of the few sansui enthusiasts who lamented it’s downfall. in the 1990s when I could finally afford them , I lashed out a lot of money to buy several second-hand early 80s components and I still have some of them in use. Same for akai especially their pro-audio equipment. Shame so many Japanese hi-fi manufacturers went that way.

Sad how global consumerism and demand for cheap tat caused the downfall of once great company names.

It always makes me sad to hear of the decline of a once-excellent audio company.

Sansui, wow!!! they were one of the best back in the '70s, we had to buy them from only high-end stereo shops. My 5 piece system back then was over $3000.

Such a sad ending to some once very excellent bradns: Sansui, Akai, Nakaichi....RIP.

It's always sad to see that once respective brands where bought by someone and then just slapped on the cheapest product you can think of. I'm from Nuremberg and remember when we (my school class) visited the GRUNDIG TV production back in the days. Nowadays I see cheap headphones or other stuff at discount stores with a GRUNDIG label on it. Very sad.

Ooow the side by side comparison, that sounded like the band spent a few hours knocking back shots of tequila before playing