I doubt I’m going to get much argument suggesting that in the supposed Gotterdammerung of vinyl following the introduction of the compact disc nearly four decades ago, turntables and arms have become decidedly—what is le mot juste here?—pretentious? extravagant? grandiose? even a little ludicrous? Back in the eighties during the “turntable wars,” the stand-mounted Goldmund radial integrated was a one-off, until it was joined by the Rockport Sirius sometime in the nineties. Since then, while it is an exaggeration to say that record-playing components of such size have proliferated, they are now far from uncommon. It’s never been easy to situate a turntable on a bookshelf—even for normal-sized tables, a shelf of greater depth, cut to fit the component, placed atop and fixed to the main shelf, was required. But now there are several tables that don’t fit even on large, dedicated equipment stands. They’ve become so big as to require a stand or more than one stand of their own, while the more gargantuan ones are, as I’ve observed several times before, like having an oil derrick or golf cart in your living room.
I’m fortunate enough to have a mostly dedicated room (21 x 15 feet) for listening (it does double-duty for television viewing and, infrequently, entertaining), but I couldn’t accommodate any of these pieces of furniture and still have space left over for speakers, electronics, software, and seating. The ballooning size has, of course, been matched by skyrocketing prices. Within the past two years, one turntable sans arm has nearly crossed the half-million-dollar threshold, yet it still can’t do a damn thing about the innumerable off-center records that drive some of us, with relief, to digital sources when it comes to piano music (or any other music with sustained tones from instruments, e.g., chords dominated or supported by brass in Wagner operas).
These thoughts are prompted by a splendid new turntable/tonearm combination that is reasonably priced (reasonable as referenced to high-end audio, anyhow), physically attractive in a tasteful understated style, solidly built, superbly engineered, and compact. It even comes with a hinged dust cover, albeit as an optional extra. The moment I laid eyes on Luxman’s new PD-151 turntable, with integrated tonearm, I wanted to review it, not least because its combination of single-minded functionality and aesthetic simplicity put me in mind of the Acoustic Research turntable, my first serious turntable and one for which it was a point of pride, noted in the promotional literature, that it could be placed on any shelf deep enough to house a 12-inch LP (this is almost true of this new Luxman, provided you forego the dust cover).
Before getting down to specifics, allow me to dispatch the complaint at the end of the previous paragraph: No, the PD-151 won’t center off-center pressings either—nor will any other turntable since the late lamented Nakamichi Dragons—but then it doesn’t cost $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, $100,000 or a quarter- to half-a-million, either. But, in anticipation of my conclusions, at $4125 without dust cover or $4995 with, the PD-151 offers genuinely superb performance, coming remarkably close to the so-called “super” setups with which I’ve had experience (SME, Air Force, Basis, Kuzma, SOTA, Brinkman, etc.) and is easy and completely unfussy (indeed, nearly foolproof) in setup. (See the sidebar for the reason behind that “nearly.”) I had it up and running in no time—less than half an hour—and swapping pickups was a snap thanks to the removable headshell (of the standard “universal” SME variety).
The almost Spartan appearance belies its technical and engineering sophistication. Stability of speed and accuracy of pitch are addressed by a combination of a proprietary sinewave/pulse-width-modulation power supply, high-torque DC brushless motor, a PID feedback loop for control over rapid speed fluctuations, not to mention a plus-eight-pound platter, for which, in a considerate touch, Luxman provides a pair of screw-in handles to facilitate precise location on the tapered center spindle shaft in the bearing well.
Atypically, the 151 features three speeds, the usual 33 and 45, plus 78, with speed trimmable via tiny, slotted pots on the front panel (you provide screwdriver, strobe disc, and light), flashing green and blue LEDs indicating over and under respectively, solid green spot-on. The motor is isolated, and there’s an underslung chassis beneath the top plate that contains many of the components. I should point out that Luxman’s description is potentially misleading. The PD-151 is not a suspended design, but owing, I assume, to canny use of materials and construction, including the supporting feet, I experienced no acoustic feedback, even with very high playback levels of deep bass material such as organ music. I could place the stylus on a stationary record and advance the volume control to maximum with absolutely no hint of low-end breakthrough, let alone howl. The supplied arm is described in greater detail in the sidebar (which I urge you to read if you’re considering buying this ensemble).
A Luxman spokesperson informed me that the company is quite proud of the main bearing. Despite there being no provided clamp or weight, he assured me the bearing is more than rugged enough to sustain high pressure, so use of these devices is encouraged should the owner wish to experiment. I tried the Basis clamp with positive results: a slight improvement in focus and definition. While I do understand why some might prefer the touch of airiness without the clamp, I personally believe the latter is the result of spurious resonances, however euphonic, owing to an unsecured disc, but then I also believe there can be no such thing as overdamping the record/platter interface. Relative to which, the PD-151 is outfitted with a rubber mat, which I believe is also the way to go. Published measurements suggest the excellent rumble figures derive in part from the use of this mat. Whatever, nothing I heard made me want to change it, and substituting harder mats offered no improvements while always making the sound edgier (i.e., less pleasing).
I cannot praise the ergonomics of the PD-151 highly enough. I thought the positioning of the main controls on the front of the base, as opposed to the top plate, might prove odd, but in use I loved it, and it keeps the plinth a model of clean mid-century-modern style. As for the dust cover, you can close it while playing records, though I found the sound a bit more literally open with it raised. Cueing is virtually spot on, and over several months of use everything worked flawlessly, fit, finish, and construction all up to Luxman standards, which are among the highest around.
The Sound
The PD-151 arrived sometime before the pandemic and stayed into the Delta surge, so not only did I have a long, long time to use it, but it overlapped with several other vinyl-related products I’ve been investigating, including the Nova Phonomena III phono preamp and the Ortofon MC Anna Diamond (the Nova is reviewed this issue, Ortofon MC Anna was reviewed in Issue 320). At the same time, I’m continuing my project, begun a couple of years ago, of exploring moving-magnet pickups; I’m also preparing a review of the latest versions of Denon’s DL103 pickups. I couldn’t have asked for a better tool set with which to evaluate these several pickups than this new Luxman ensemble with its detachable headshell, while the Nova III phono preamp and the mm and mc phonostages in my McIntosh C53 preamp all allow for optimal matching of impedance and capacitance.
I’m going to approach the sound evaluation of the 151 through the lens of these four quite different and distinctive pickups. Some turntables have an immediately recognizable sound of their own; others don’t or at least have much less of one. This new Luxman is solidly in the latter camp. Regardless of which pickup I installed, the sound I heard seemed to me essentially the sound of the pickup itself. Another way of saying this is that I could not discern a background or overlay of sonic characteristics from one pickup to the next that I could reliably identify as an artifact of the 151.
I began with Analogspark’s remastered-from-the-mastertapes original-cast West Side Story, my go-to version when I want to hear this ground-breaking score in the most dynamic, explosive sound it has ever enjoyed. All the big, staged-for-the-microphone numbers—the Prologue, the Jet Song, the Dance at the Gym, the Rumble, the Quintet—occupied a proscenium-like panorama across the front of the room, the movements within and around the stage outstandingly tracked and excitingly rendered. I’ve been as guilty as anyone of propagating the myth that big turntables make for big presentations. Whatever truth there may be in that, the 151 goes some distance toward undermining it. Going from Broadway up town to the Metropolitan Opera, whenever I play my reference Carmen (Bernstein /DG) I expect to be transported to a classic opera house like the Met, La Scala, or Covent Garden, and that’s exactly what the Luxman did, climaxes huge and powerful with resounding brass in anticipation of the arrival of the matador Escamillo. Even greater size and weight were on display in the famous Decca recordings of Turandot (Mehta) and Aida (Solti/RCA vintage or Decca reissue), the Triumphal Scene in the latter with blazing Egyptian trumpets—what a sound!—demarking the soundstage right and left with spectacular force and you-are-there presence. (However justly renowned Solti and Decca are for their Ring cycle, if I absolutely had to choose one of the conductor’s recordings for a desert island, this sensationally recorded, red-blooded, almost savage Aida would be it.)
That is how things sounded using the Ortofon MC Anna Diamond, with all but peerless transparency and absence of grain. Switching to the Shure V15 Type Vx MR brought fractionally less dynamism and apparent transparency and very fine grain, but no less width and depth to the soundstage. What I immediately heard, however, was the more neutral tonal profile of the Shure, e.g., the finger snaps that kick the West Side Story Prologue into action have a less sharply defined snap, but also a greater impression of realism, more like flesh snapping against flesh. By the same token, with the bell that introduces the pas de deux between Maria and Tony at the gym, both the Ortofon and the Shure let us clearly hear its individual tone from the initial transient, followed by its die-away into atmosphere sans any sort of abrupt cut off. But the rising top end of the Ortofon allows a greater impression of atmosphere and more brilliance to the bell itself, while the Shure offers less ambience but also less “hi-fi” in favor of what strikes me as a truer rendition of timbre.
None of this surprised me given the rising response of the Ortofon above 10kHz and the falling response of the Shure after 12kHz. Which is correct? Well, it’s that saw from the early days of audio, still far from dull: If two components sound different from one another, chances are they’re both wrong or at least not quite echt right (but in this instance I lean toward the Shure because its frequency profile is almost dead flat to 10kHz). Both pickups imaged and soundstaged excellently, but the Anna Diamond brought the presentation slightly more forward and present with that sense of snap, immediacy, and transparency that endear moving coils to so many audiophiles (effects to which, I hasten to add, I am far from immune). But if you listen carefully to the Shure, you will notice that it’s very nearly as transparent, the presentation merely less forward.
Next I went back to the West Side Story Prologue, this time with a Denon DL103, and was nearly floored by how bold, vivid, and full of life the presentation was. Talk about palpable presence, the singers in the Jet Song almost leaping from the speakers. Yet none of this dynamism was a function of a hyped or exaggerated frequency response. On the contrary, throughout the entire presence region this pickup is amazingly smooth, unaggressive, and ever so slightly pushed back (akin to the BBC Gundry Dip), yet without any effect of reticence or mere politeness. The same qualities were revealed on the three previously mentioned opera recordings, after which I dug out the reissue of Graceland, where the four drum thwacks (electronically generated) registered powerfully, each occupying a precise and distinctly separate position across the soundstage such as I’d rarely heard them as presented on vinyl. The unaccompanied singers on “Homeless” were, again like the singers in the Jet Song, palpably present and obviously of flesh and blood. Another album, totally different: Beethoven’s A minor quartet by the Yale Quartet on a vintage Vanguard LP, the four strings beautifully sweet and natural, with the body and dimensionality of the real thing such that I could close my eyes and imagine the players in the room (give the speakers a lot of credit here—fully restored original Quad ESLs).
And the last pickup: Clearaudio’s Charisma V2. This is a moving magnet much admired by my colleague Neil Gader (TAS 284) that I’d been wanting to try for a good long while, which distributor Musical Surroundings graciously accommodated. The rap on the Charisma is that it’s the moving magnet for fans of moving coils, which my experience amply corroborates. In the areas of transparency, imaging, definition, and detail it rivals most moving coils that I know that are of, let’s say, the Yang persuasion, which is to say the Ortofons. It’s more frequency neutral than most mc’s, and unlike the Shure, its top end doesn’t slope downward, so it’s not forgiving in that area. Nor is it aggressive either. For air and atmosphere it again rivals the Ortofon but without the bogus brilliance, and the finger snaps in the West Side Story Prologue have satisfying snap, though without quite the impression of greater realism of the Shure. It’s also spectacularly dynamic and tracks like crazy. Neil awarded the Charisma V2 a Golden Ear, and I believe it is now one of his principal references. Thanks to the PD 151 I had no difficult hearing why.
This capsule tale of four pickups essentially encapsulates the tale of the PD-151—the sound you hear is going to be almost entirely the sound of whatever pickup you install. Of course, any good or better record-playing setup is going to allow the personalities of pickups as distinct as these to emerge, but few in my experience reveal them as readily and resolutely as this one. However, tonal balance is not the end all and be all of LP reproduction or any other kind, for that matter. Stability and accuracy of pitch, which of course is dependent upon accuracy and constancy of speed, are central. As there are audiophiles who seem to ascribe almost mystical properties to certain kinds of drives and motors over others, I might as well state my bias. Regardless of drive, if the speed stays unwaveringly accurate and constant, I can’t for the life of me understand how anything else, at least from the perspective of the turntable, can affect a sense of drive, timing, and note-to-note, beat-to-beat, moment-to-moment connectedness. With every source I use to check such things—“Blue Rondo a la Turk” from Take Five, the “Morning Raga” from Ali Akbar Kahn’s Morning and Evening Ragas, any cut from Flamenco Fever (M&K), “Dance of the Earth” from The Rite of Spring (Bernstein/Sony)—the PD-151 acquitted itself with imperturbable aplomb and confidence. (I was amused to read a British reviewer who compared the drive and dynamism of the 151 to a Garrard 401, chez the UK a Parnassian exemplar.)
I’ve already alluded to dynamic range by way of the Aida, Carmen, and West Side Story sources, so in case that isn’t enough, let me state unequivocally that the 151’s dynamic reproduction is principally limited by the quality of vinyl you place on the platter and the quality of recording pressed into that vinyl, and the same goes for detail. Reproduction of detail, suppression of noise, and dynamic range are, of course, clearly related to both electrical and mechanical aspects of record-playing components. The PD-151 is quite amazing here. I could turn the volume all the way up and hear absolutely no hum anywhere and no hint of electrical noise unless my ear was all the way up against the tweeter, where it was exceedingly low. And as already noted but worth repeating, I could also cue the stylus to a stationery record and turn the volume all the way up with absolute no acoustic breakthrough. These are tests many rigs costing several multitudes the 151’s price do not pass or at least not to this degree.
Conclusion
This is the point in most reviews I’ve read of so-called “moderately priced” turntables and arms that the reviewer references performance to price and finds something to criticize vis-à-vis the “super” turntables costing from tens of thousands of dollars to skies the limit. When it comes to observing that convention, this review will be deficient. For one thing, if you actually believe that expense in and of itself guarantees superiority, especially when it comes to a technology as old as playback of vinyl records, then you hardly need me to reinforce your prejudices. For another, if I were to do so, it would betray, indeed utterly falsify, my experience of the PD 151. I so thoroughly enjoyed using this table/arm combination, from first cue down to last cue up, and was so completely immersed in the music it played, that at no point during the several-months listening did I find myself thinking how much more dynamic, more detailed, more—well, fill in your own adjective and then supply whatever brand you are lusting after. For myself, I never once thought about any so-called “better” setups I’ve reviewed in the past.
On the contrary, I experienced more sheer joy with the PD-151 than I’ve had reviewing a turntable in I can’t remember when. One compelling reason for this, quite apart from its intrinsically superb performance, owes to how quick and easy—like 30 seconds or less!—it was to swap pickups thanks to its detachable headshell. I purchased a few quality after-market spares, installed the pickups, and thereafter had a great time enjoying the sonic personalities of different pickups and matching them to different kinds of recordings and music—all without sacrificing basic turntable/arm performance in any way that matters to me as a music lover. Sent me right back to my salad days as an audiophile, wide-eyed, enthusiastic, and full of wonder discovering for the first time the pleasures of recorded music excellently reproduced.
Put me in mind of something Harry “Sweets” Edison said at a Sinatra recording session after they’d laid down a track over 20 times: “Man, it just don’t get no better than that.”
Specs & Pricing
Drive: Belt
Speed: 33-1/3, 45, 78
Tonearm bearing: Captive, fixed
Tonearm length: 9″ S-shaped, static balance
Tonearm cable: Supplied
Headshell: Detachable universal type
Dust cover: Hinged, optional
Dimensions: 18.3″ x 6.5″ x 15.4″ (dust cover closed)
Weight: 34.6 lbs., 39 lbs. with dust cover
Price: $4125 without dust cover, $4995 with dust cover
LUXMAN AMERICA, INC.
luxmanamerica.com
(845) 219-1730
By Paul Seydor
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