record spinning on a lenco b55

In the past few months, I’ve bought three record decks.

The first was an Angels Horn H00501 that I bought used. Had I had bought new, it would have set me back in excess of £200. It sounded pretty damn good to be honest, and came with built-in pre-amp, bluetooth input and output, a supposedly solid iron platter (probably aluminium), and a natty set of 36W bookshelf speakers. It also comes with all kinds of mid 21st century gubbins such as an optical auto-stop.

record spinning on Angels Horn H00501

It seems like a good deal if you’re buying new, and after all, it comes with a two-year, no questions asked warranty. Which is great, because it’s almost impossible to repair.

My unit worked fine for a couple of months until the aforementioned optical auto-stop started acting up, resulting in the turntable stopping - and cutting of the output on a regularly irregular basis.

Angels Horn doesn’t supply repair manuals or circuit diagrams, and the so-called help on their website is limited to setup guides. Email and chat help does nothing more than refer you to those inadequate docs if you’re not the original purchaser.

bush rta 2000 seen in a shop window

I’ve been eyeing up a Danish 1973 Bush Arena RTA 2000 for some time now. It has a Swiss-made rim-drive Lenco B55 turntable with a continuous speed setting between 10RPM and 86RPM, a built-in FM tuner, a pre-amp, and a set of big-ass speakers. It sounds better than the Angels horn and, to my mind, is superior in every way. I can even cast from my phone to the RTA over FM using a car BlueTooth transmitter. From what I’ve been able to find out, it cost the equivalent of £2,500 when it was new.

I could give you the tech spec, but I’m not going to. The best thing is that it’s user servicable, and comes with a truly massive manual that includes circuit layouts and diagrams, and genuinelly useful information for servicing.

Which is probably why it sounds so very good after more than half a century.