That turntable is not a turntable for the domestic audio system. It is for Low-Fi DJ use.
These newer DJ TT's are useful for archival of historical recordings, as they often are able to play discs anywhere from 16 to 90rpms, which pretty much covers just about anything ever made except for vertically cut Pathe discs and 16inch radio transcriptions. Indeed, there is a TT from Rek-O-Kut which is essentially a modified Technics made for this very purpose
Turntable Picture REK-O-KUT CVS-14
I saw one of these on display at a hi-fi shop a few years back. It was beautiful! Looked a lot nicer then that photo. I'd like to get one of these before they are gone. It's probably the only way one can still get a new Technics 1200 at a decent price (the one I saw was $675) except without the name and with much more interesting features! With Panasonic out of the 1200 business, Rek-O-Kut won't have a base for these which to work off of any longer. Whatever TT's are still out there unsold is probably all she wrote.
Good turntables are always manual. You don't want the arm pulling any mechanism.
DJ tables are always manual, the mechanisms for automatic playback would make it impossible for them to do what they do, unless you are referring to something else.
Good arms need to be strong with low resonance and have good damping. They are not S-shaped which adds mass where you don't need it.
That is a weakness with these TT's, but the arms on the better models don't sound half bad with a properly set up hi-fi cartridge. In the case of the Technics, there are mods to install high-end tone arms. Still, the ability to swap out the head shell for different ones set up with 78rpm/mono/stereo cartridges is a big plus to me. Also, some models (like my Numark) include a straight arm which is supposed to be better for DJ scratching and can be swapped out for the S-shaped one. In the case of DJ tables, the S-shaped arm is superior for playback according to the owners manual. But these are a special case.
Belt drive is fine, I have replaced the belt on my Thorens TD 150 once in 46 years!
With these direct drive tables, your also guaranteed to get spot on accuracy of speed/pitch, something not always trustworthy with some belt drives.
I'm not arguing that these types sound better in general then expensive dedicated audiophile TT's, but the better models from Technics, Stanton, Audio-Technica can be quite interesting and a lot of fun, but ONLY on a few higher end models. The cheap ones are appallingly bad.
