Worth $800? Audio-Technica AT-LP7 - One Year Later?

hey everybody welcome back to recordology i'm so glad you're there are you aware that we have a membership program called the recordology vinyl nation for a small monthly fee you can get an extra show every week and a bunch of other cool things as well consider joining link is in the description below i mentioned that because still people counting so i didn't even know you had this so i wanted to bring that up to you but today we're here to take another look at the lp7 which has the distinction of being the most expensive turntable that i've ever seen ever owned and ever reviewed on this channel as i've said many times recordology has always been geared towards the entry level so i'm very surprised that we were ever able to venture up into this territory this turntable is the flagship model for audio technica and retails at approximately eight hundred dollars is that too much do i still like it would i recommend it check out this video to find out [Music] this is recordology so like i said this is the flagship model still is it's been that way for at least three years i believe for audio technica this is the successor to the lp5 which i think they still sell that as well by the way let's start with the dust cover what we're going to do is i'm going to give you a brief overview we've done the full review i'll put a link in the description below if you want to check out the original video so i'm not going to rehash that but i'm going to give you a brief overview of the feature set and then i'm just gonna you know talk about what my experiences are point out any flaws or things that i like and then we'll do a sound test a direct feed sound test at the end let's start with the dust cover itself it has a beautiful smoked dark gray dust cover which is beautiful i love it i also love the fact that they've put an extra large badge on here and just a little subtle touches there i don't really care for the fact it lifts all the way off i know that's sort of a premium turntable feature and um you know it is what it is i prefer the dust covers that hinge up it's just more convenient that way and true to form i've done a terrible job of preventing this from getting scuffed and scratched this polycarbonate that they use is just so susceptible to scratches and and whatnot so anyway that's the dust cover it's beautiful looking but again i wish it were hinged now the turntable i want to just talk for a minute about the weight of this and i've mentioned this before but this thing is hefty hefty hefty like this thing weighs more like considerably more than lp 120 which is already weighted this thing is an absolute beast they say it's an mdf base but it has to be weights in here there has to be because this is it's a plastic veneer with apparently very dense mdf and some weights because this thing is so incredibly heavy i can't even convey it to you um but yeah it's pretty simple it's got you know a great styling aesthetic these big feet here that you know take on the corner curve aesthetic of the turntable is fantastic it looks phenomenal it looks high-end is it worth 800 well stay tuned i'll let you know what i think about that let's look at the bottom of this thing yeah i never had any idea that um i would ever own something of this caliber now i i say i'm talking about it like it's a high-end turntable which to me it is and i think to a lot of people it is other people will say well that's a good starter turntable or that's a that's a mid-grade turntable nothing to get excited about because you know vpi turntables you know 25 000 bucks and up it's just crazy again i always point back to the people that spend a hundred thousand dollars on cabling you know i'll never be one of those people and you know there's a lot of diminished returns the more you spend between a hundred and three hundred dollars will get you way much more than the difference between 500 and 5000 in my opinion that being said i've never touched anything over 800 bucks but i've heard that said by others and i believe it okay so the plinth material is solid whatever it is i believe the the primary part of it is solid with the main bearing drilled in there the feet are externally attached and you can see this box here which contains the preamp circuits the line outputs and probably the main board right there i just did this whole segment and realize you couldn't see it so this foam here correlates to the bottom of the tone arm so i'm guessing that if you needed to make an adjustment to that or remove it you could potentially do it there um let's take a look at the feet up close here by the way i want to apologize i'm using the ring light i just too busy today so i didn't have time to film when i had the good daylight plus in denver today the weather was crap it was like gray and dark and snowy and it never even really got bright there wasn't really good filming light anyway so we're relegated to the ring light here so i apologize always shows up the dust and all that stuff but let's look at the foot here so it's got a plastic housing right there and again the curvature match is pretty dang close to the plinth and we got this kind of inset shell that pivots and then this rubber slice right there and there's a there's sort of a suction cup action as you saw earlier where if this thing's on a smooth surface the weight of it makes it kind of suction i don't know if that's by design or whatnot but these work really good i think that they're good you know dampening sound isolating feet they do a great great job let's take a closer look at that main bearing i mean there's not much to do here other than observe it you can see the mounting screws there as well and another shot oh look how dusty that is this light is so unforgiving stuff will look clean and then you'll put it in this light and be like wow it's actually filthy okay so looking at the back here this is obviously a belt driven turntable look closer at that in a minute it is a 12 volt 2 amp machine and i believe this is manufactured by hand pin turntables i haven't been able to confirm that though so let's look at the controls we got the preamp circuit which is right there in front of us we've got the line output and a moving magnet or moving coil selector switch for the cartridge so if you're running a higher end moving coil that requires that extra bit of amplification you can get it right there also the lp3 has that as well which i think is kind of cool so if you want to try out some higher end cartridges assumingly from audio technica or others you could do that uh also there's the grounding post this is a um with the built-in preamp select you're going to have the grounding terminal so if you're not using the built-in preamp you need to connect the grounding terminal and then finally the 12 volt power supply this is powered off of dc that was one of the gripes that people had for me i mean it is another wall wart you gotta find room for um but besides that it works it's functional and uh yeah we'll get to the motor noise or lack thereof here in a minute let's look topside next one thing that annoys me about filming at night like this is you've got all these different color temperatures i've got these uh led lights i've got these halogens i've got incandescents and i've got this led ring light and they all have different color temperatures so you'll see these reflective areas here i just turned off these down lights i've got over here that were incandescent was just showing up as an orange glow so it's i prefer daylight daylight is the best way to go that's that's the alfred hitchcock in me i prefer to film outside and use filming in the shade outside is the best lighting you can get for just sort of blanket lighting fill lighting so i really like to use daylight when possible okay enough about the lighting we're not here to talk about lighting so this is the backside kind of looking down on top of the turntable it does have a two-speed motor and there is a pulley right there which obviously the belt connects to but this motor is mounted on a little pivoting shock mount there it's absolutely silent you cannot hear anything in terms of motor noise or rumble i mean it is whisper quiet i'm not sure what motor they're using but it is a good one it sounds really good it's very interesting how this main bearing area can be removed and we saw those screws that seem to correlate with those spots right there i don't know let me know down in the comments below what that is is that so you can get in there and lubricate the bearing i'm not 100 sure but um this does rotate by the way some spindles don't this one does and the weight of the platter rests on this brass ring right there um over here we've got the on and off speed control switch all right next gripe is it is a two speed turntable i wish it was three speed i really do i think that that would be a good thing there's also a light there again the the knobs the hardware is all machined metal very high quality you can see how there's like this textured pattern machined into it just feels high quality a lot of it has to do with weight and inertia which this seems to have in leaps and bounds all right we're going to take a closer look at the tone arm itself next okay so here is the tone arm itself this is really nice i do love it it has obviously an anti-skate adjustment a counterbalance adjustment but this also has a vta a vertical tracking angle adjustment we turn this ring to raise or lower this guy the entire piece in the back raises their lowers so you can adjust the vta make sure your tone arm is horizontal to the plinth that will allow you to make adjustments for various cartridges because some of the grado cartridges for example can be tall this actually will not adjust high enough to accommodate properly the vta needed for the grado prestige series which i was kind of surprised didn't get up high enough for that that being said it seems to do a good job one gripe i have about this is there is some play here notice how the whole thing kind of wiggles it shouldn't do that i don't think that this should move i mean it's it's not quite as solid so what ends up happening is down here there's this much play when it's in a locked position which it shouldn't oops shouldn't be doing materials so the tone arm is metal probably aluminum uh the vta adjustment dial is plastic i believe let's see here hard to tell i think this knob is plastic the counterbalance is metal the counterbalance dial is plastic the actual um pivot here is metal uh the tone arm lift is metal and a really good one it's got you know good play good control the clip here is super cheap plastic you know you spend eight hundred dollars you would think they would have a little bit fancier clip it's it's this cheap it's tiny stuff like that and that snaps off and that could totally ruin your day okay so it obviously is going to be using a half inch mount typical for the audio technica products this guy comes with this i think this is the stock one i've moved these around a little bit so i may be guilty uh presenting you with a non-original head shell but i think this is the original head shell it's got a nice big lift it's just like a frame really it will fit and accommodate a lot of cartridge as you can see there so this is the cartridge that it ships with this is the audio technica vmn 20eb this is a dual moving magnet elliptical cartridge the stylus itself is a 0.3 mil by 0.7 mil which is pretty standard size as you can see with the standard half inch mount it does a great job and it can accommodate you know a lot of cartridge in here you can see there's a lot of vacant space this is a good neutral sounding cartridge got no issues with it i've really felt no need to upgrade it for audio quality sometimes i like running my concord on here just because it looks cool but i thought i would show you this the the stylus replacement itself is about 79 the cartridge is between 120 and 150 so it's sort of a mid-range cartridge it's a good one though but the audio technica cartridge line is uh is famous so you can upgrade and just you know go to town customizing the sound with any of their cartridges and like i said i've tried a couple okay the next thing we really need to address here is this incredible platter this thing comes with i've never before since seen anything like this but it looks like plastic it's as heavy as all get out i mean like pounds this thing is heavy um anybody want to take a guess at what this is man this thing looks dirty under this light this is embarrassing i'm sorry how dirty and duh actually this thing's been in storage which leads me to uh do i still like it i'll get to that in a minute um but i'm like it must be steel it must be it feels like cast iron the thing is so heavy by the way it's 20 millimeters thick or yeah 20 millimeters thick but no it's made out of polyoxymethylene you may be saying to yourself what the heck is polyoxymethylene it's a thermoengineered it's a thermoplastic and it's extremely rigid apparently it has good anti-resonance properties and apparently it's a fingerprint magnet it just it's weird that they chose to use this but it's fantastic it's you know there's no there's not an an absolute completely silent operation there's no wobble the thing is just you know perfect like i said before uh his belt german has an enormous belt because the belt goes around the outside but unlike the u-turns it still surprises me how much people gripe about u-turns but unlike the u-turns you never have to touch the belt once you install it because the belt doesn't need to be adjusted but it is an external belt i think that looks cool some people well people grouch about everything so i keep saying some people don't like this some people don't like that everything somebody doesn't like right everything about it about anything somebody out there isn't going to be satisfied but the speed control is down here and that is a cursory tour of the lp7 now we're going to listen to it direct feed in a minute but what do i think about this thing i've had it now for a little over a year and what are my thoughts would i recommend it by the way i was just doing a little research a minute ago in between takes and i noticed that audio technica has this thing marked up to 850 now on their website i'm not sure what the what the amazon price is but the price has gone up on this but that's typical the uh logistics issues that audio technica and others are facing right now has made shipping these units next to impossible at the prices they were at i had a lengthy discussion with a prominent turntable manufacturer slash importer the other day and the what's going on behind the scenes in terms of trying to get product to the united states trying to maintain product and trying to sell it is incredible this shipping is incredibly expensive right now by the way a little inside baseball trivia that i learned is that if you see turntables uh coming out these days without dust covers apparently the cost of making dust covers and shipping them specifically how many turntables you can cram in a shipping container is exponential and if they can figure out a way to do it with a cloth dust cover or a low slim profile than the sh the cost of the manufacturer and therefore the costs we pay go down but audio technica is having a real hard time keeping stock that's why prices are going up on everything remember when the lp one or the lp 60s were like 90 bucks 98 bucks and now they're 130 if you can get them if you can get them all right enough of that final verdict before we give it a listen and you judge for yourself what do i think of this thing my opinion is this i was using this as my daily driver for some time i became frustrated with the fact it wasn't three speeds because i wanted to play 78s audio technica says this turntable monitors its speed and maintains its accuracy but i prefer a pitch slider i i just like the lp 120s i just and i know this is more elegant this is you know more sleek looking it does look beautiful it's still fully manual completely manual there's nothing on it it won't even auto stop on its own so in that regard it's no different than a much cheaper lp 120 series but with that you get the speed adjustment you get direct drive if you're into that you still get a tone arm that you can by the way this is a j-shaped toner not an s shape but you can still put different head shells different cartridges on all that stuff in my experience it sounds great there's no problem with it other than the sort of jankiness of of this was see how that moves i feel like that shouldn't move that much and if you adjust this down it tightens it but then it positions it in the lowest position this should stay rigid regardless of the vta height so that's that's annoying that's not enough to cause a major major issue but it is annoying so i would say that this is good it is highly recommended it is not perfect i think it's overpriced i think that 300 would be a more appropriate high end that's having no idea how much this thing costs to build but apparently it's costing more to ship it because the prices are going up i am kind of surprised also they haven't moved to an lp i guess nine because they seem to be doing odd numbers they have the five and seven whatever at this point they still have the lp5 i just think that the cost of making new turntables and bringing them to market right now is not sustainable people that have never touched one of these or seen them in person have told me oh it looks cheap but it's lightweight it's a piece of crap it is definitely not a piece of crap it definitely feels premium it definitely feels high quality it's just not my idea my ideal turntable i guess what's the best way to say that i just like i like an lp 120 or you know the higher end lp 140s that have the vta adjustment as well i prefer that i guess is in terms of an aesthetic by the way if you're interested in that kind of a turntable stay tuned because a little birdie tells me we get we're going to be reviewing a nice direct drive unit in the near future with a pitch slider and strobe markings which i love i love that stuff so anyway it's still recommended if this is you if this is stuff that is good to you you like this stuff then i say go for it there's no pro and you can afford it that's the other thing it is a bit the price is super high it is super super high but it may be just perfect for what you're looking at all right enough babbling time to test out the audio headphones on guys stereo direct feed here we go i just want a quick word about the transform no not transformers power supplies i was very firmly corrected if not calling these dc transformers but power supplies that audio technica provides for their products are absolutely massive as you can see if you were to compare this to a standard wall wart it's about double the length it is it's beefy it feels high quality it's got an adjustable or not adjustable but a replaceable tip there depending on what country you're in just it's just well made apparently okay there we go call me an audio technica fan boy but i just their stuff is just good it's just good it's consistently good um i'll be doing a line direct feed to a digital audio recorder and i will sync that audio with what you are seeing on camera and for audio you're in for a treat today because we are listening to a pretty rare record if you're near or have been or are in the denver area you will know of e-lich gardens it's our theme park are not one and only we have a couple different theme parks but this is the primary one at its original location was home to a famous big band era ballroom called the trocadero which i've mentioned before and i have a couple of these jazz at the trock records which are really really cool this is from 1967. this particular copy is awesome because it's autographed those are real autographs by some of the artists most notably perhaps peanuts huckle at the top there was once the leader of the glenn miller orchestra in the 1970s and on the back we've got some more scribblings so this record if it could tell stories right but this ought to be pretty fun and it should help us with not having any issues listening to some music hint wink wink so let's go ahead and spin it up and give her a listen you guys let me know what you think of this 849 dollar now turntable [Music] huh [Music] so [Music] hmm huh [Music] uh [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] okay guys and that's gonna do it for today if you wouldn't mind please give me a thumbs up if you like this video thumbs down if you didn't if you haven't already subscribed hit subscribe we do two shows a week plus an extra third bonus show for members so there's a lot of stuff going on here you guys also active in the community tab as well as the comments we've got stuff going on almost every day so you're not going to want to miss that but for now that's going to do it guys happy record hunting we'll see you next time

Channel: Record-ology

Views: 28,712

Keywords: At-lp7, Audio-Technica, Vinyl, Vinyls, Record, Records, Player, Players, Turntable, Turntables, Review, Reviews, Crosley, Victrola, Audio Technica, 33, 45, 78, 33.3, 33 1/3, Rpm, DIY, What’s inseide, Teardown, Fix, Repair, Build, Beginners, Cruiser, Suitcase, Unboxing, Retro, Vintage, Old

Id: Eb7OxEkudZY

Length: 24min 22sec (1462 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 20 2022