TD 402 DD (Walnut)

Over the past year I upgraded my stereo to much higher quality amp, preamp, and speakers. The only thing left to upgrade was my Fluance RT 81 turntable. I couldn’t find many reviews of this turntable however from what I read European reviews were very favorable. I’m not sure how this compares with more audio file types of turntables, but given that many of my records are secondhand and my ears are not the greatest, I wasn’t necessarily looking for that. Partly I bought this because of the name Thorens, partly because the look of it matches my vintage McIntosh equipment. My first impressions comparing this with the Fluance is that it is certainly well-built. It looks beautiful. The output using a phono input on my preamp was lower than that of the Fluance and so I had to turn the volume up a bit. Not a big deal, just a surprise. The sound was also a little different, with a little more low end bass. I compared both turntables using the same cartridge, an Audio Technical VM540ML. Before I swapped out the cartridge that came with the turntable I confirmed that it was aligned properly, so that is reassuring. And the sound was quite pleasant with the stock cartridge. Obviously I had to test it before taking the time to swap cartridges. Really, I have no complaints at all about this and I am very pleased!