It is said that good things come to those who wait, and it’s a good thing that Audio-Technica’s AT-LPW50PB turntable is finally available in Australia, because I have been anticipating its arrival since its launch in the USA at CES 2020 – a show that, due to Covid-19, was a ‘virtual’ event, so that it was not possible for me to see or hear it in the flesh. 

My anticipation was partly because of Audio-Technica’s unrivalled reputation in the field of all things vinyl, particularly phono cartridges, but more recently, turntables. This famous Japanese company has been in the business for more than half-a-century, after all.  

But it was also because with the AT-LPW50PB, Audio-Technica has finally released a turntable in my wife’s preferred finish (piano black), that’s also a turntable that’s a no-frills, belt-driven model that has been designed for out-and-out performance with vinyl. So I don’t have to pay for a USB output (which I don’t want) nor do I have to pay for Bluetooth connectivity (which I also don’t want).

OK, so it does come with an in-built phono stage, which I personally do not need, being the owner of several external phono stages, both active and passive, as well as owning two amplifiers with phono stages already built in, but I guess that I am not Audio-Technica’s typical customer, and that the company has figured out that most of the people catching the wave that is the vinyl resurgence would rather have the convenience of an in-built phono stage, so that they can connect it to, well, pretty much any type of component that has a line-level input, be it an amplifier or a powered loudspeaker.

Features

The first thing I have to say about the new Audio-Technica AT-LPW50PB is that it is simply gorgeous! If we were to go on looks alone, there isn’t a single turntable for sale for under AU$1,000 that looks anywhere near as good as the LPW50PB. Indeed it looks a whole lot like Yamaha’s GT-5000 and that unit will set you back the best part of AU$13,000! 

But important though looks might be, it is performance that counts, and when you look how the AT-LPW50PB is put together, you will quickly gain the impression that it’s built in such a way that it will be able to deliver very high performance indeed.  

Let’s take the plinth for a start. It not only looks good, it is also very solidly built, at 30mm thick. And there’s a good chunk of wood involved in building it, not some flimsy bit of plastic. Indeed most of the turntable’s not insubstantial weight (5.5kg) is due to the plinth. A good solid plinth means less resonance and improved resistance to airborne vibration, which is exactly what you want in a turntable. The plinth is supported by four feet that are slightly flexible, but not ‘springy’ as such. 

The AT-LPW50PB has two speeds on tap – 33.33 and 45 rpm – selected via the rotary switch at the front left of the plinth. Although the switch has a central ‘Off’ position, this simply stops platter rotation. To switch the turntable off you need to access a small press-button that is rather inconveniently located at the rear of the turntable. 

This press-button is a low-voltage switch because power for the Audio-Technica AT-LPW50PB is supplied by a switch-mode power supply plug-pack that plugs into a 240V power socket and it’s this that provides the 12-volts of direct current the turntable’s motor requires. Although the plug-pack is branded ‘Audio-Technica’ it is actually made by a company going by the name of Golden Profit Electronics. 

As mentioned in the introduction to this review, the Audio-Technica AT-LPW50PB has a phono pre-amplifier built in, the output of which is at the rear of the turntable. 

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to, because there’s a slider switch alongside the two gold-plated RCA outputs that allows you to take the output directly from the cartridge and send it to your own external phono preamplifier if you’d prefer.  

These two gold-plated RCA outputs have a diameter that is very slightly smaller than standard, so using standard RCA plugs results in a rather ‘loose’ fit and a tenuous electrical connection. You can fix this by squeezing in the outer (negative) ring of the plugs on the cable before you use them. 

The Audio-Technica AT-LPW50PB’s lightweight aluminium platter comes standard with a rubber mat, but you can optionally purchase one that’s made from anti-static fibre. The two mats have different thicknesses, which mean you will be able to adjust the vertical tracking angle of the cartridge using the mats. Audio-Technica’s Australian distributor, Technical Audio Group, kindly included the anti-static fibre mat with my review sample.  

The Audio-Technica AT-LPW50PB comes with a clear Perspex dustcover and spring-loaded hinges. It’s nice that these are provided standard, rather than as an optional extra. The spring-loading of the hinges means that if you give the lid a slight push when you first lift it, it will rise automatically to the fully open position without further input from you. 

The spring loading also prevents the cover from dropping too quickly. You need to manually close the lid at least to the 45° position, after which it will descend fairly gracefully by itself until it comes to a stop on small rubber stoppers (which are attached to the cover, not the turntable).

Tonearm

The tonearm is a straight-line carbon-fibre, statically-balanced type with spring-applied anti-skating. It’s fitted with a universal headshell mount which makes it a snack to swap headshells fitted with different phono cartridges.  

The counterweight is the standard type, with a separate ring to indicate down-force. I first used this to apply the recommended down-force for the cartridge (2.0 grams) and then checked the down-force with a digital stylus gauge, which showed down-force at 2.1 grams, proving that you’ll be able to accurately adjust down-force even without a separate gauge. The spring-loaded anti-skating force is applied by a small rotary dial at the base of the tonearm mount. 

The design of the AT-LPW50PB’s tonearm pivot makes it difficult to use cartridge alignment protractors that depend on you finding the centre of the pivot from above (for example the alignment gauges made by Feickert or Brinkmann) so you’d be better to use one that uses sighting lines, such as the Mo-Fi Geo-Disc.  

However, when I checked the alignment of the AT-VM95E cartridge that’s supplied pre-installed in Audio-Technica’s upgraded AT-HS4 universal-mount headshell I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had been perfectly aligned at the factory, so if you don’t ever replace the cartridge, you won’t need to invest in an alignment tool. (Actually, I would not expect that you would have to invest in one anyway — hi-fi retailers should provide this alignment as a free service.) 

The cartridge fitted to the end of this tonearm is, of course, made by Audio-Technica itself and is included in the price of the turntable. It’s an AT-VM95E moving-magnet cartridge with an elliptical stylus. This particular design has quite an interesting back-story because although it was released only about two years ago, it is really an evolution of (and the replacement for) Audio-Technica’s AT-95E cartridge, a model that had been in continuous production for almost 40 years as a part of the ‘95’ series, about which more in a moment.