Good automatic TT's

For such a great mid-fi belt-drive turntable, the 80s-era Harman Kardon T60 seems to be often overlooked. I have two of them, one with a Shure V15vmr, the other with a Grado Gold. The T60 looks and feels substantial, seems to be very well made, has a great arm, adjustable pitch, is an excellent performer, and allows the use of any interconnect cables. Its auto lift feature is selectable and works well. It also includes a record weight. Its clean and simple appearance still looks good today.

My old HK/Rabco ST-8 was actually pretty foolproof, believe it or not. A linear arm is easy for shaky eyes to align with the leadin groove and it had auto-lift at the end. Put a good, high compliance cartridge on one and it would never harm a record.

For your special purposes, its speed stability would, um, help you believe that special drink is working even better than you expected! The HK motor would rumble, really, which worked well on certain kinds of music!

In the late '70's and early '80's Bang & Olufsen made the 4000 - 4004 series of turntables, these were belt driven, to minimize the noise and were fully automatic. The later series of 8000 were direct drive and never sounded as quiet as the 4000 series. The 4000 are plentiful on the used market $100-$300, they are fairly reliable, B & O still sells parts for the units, but only to authorized repair shops. B & O stopped manufacturing the cartridges, but Soundsmith in NY is manufacturing new cartridges. They also can refurbish a older turntables to guarantee a long life.

I'd go for

1) my fave idea, an Expressimo lifter. I wouldn't want to give up the resolution of my high-end TT just to save getting up. When I think I'm woozy enough to let the runout groove play for an hour, I try to put on a CD so I can drift off easy.

2) a Thorens with auto-lift ( several models have it including my old TD146 ). However the arms on these are their weak point and they're near impossible to change because of the lifting mechanism.

3) an Elac changer for nostalgia's sake. Auto everything! Mine was reliable, I played lots of music on it when I was 20, but I remember it as rumbly and low-detail compared with today.

Wow! More great suggestions. There's a B&O 4004 on ebay but others must know its value as the price is quite high.
I like the idea of small and simple. "Martinis and music" night or better still "Vodka and vinyl" - I can hear the music and feel the ice cold shaker......