New direct drive turntables?


At the risk of beginning a DD vs. belt drive debate -- which is not at all my desire, as those so frequently turn into rants -- I'm wondering the following: Are there any new, reasonably affordable, decent-quality direct drive turntables? (I'm thinking about something that might compete with the lower-end Regas and Pro-jects, something in the $1k range, give or take.

I'm asking because it seems so odd that the Technics tables stopped being produced at about the moment that vinyl really took off again. Isn't there some company -- Denon? Onkyo? Technics? -- that has already done the R&d, that knows how to manufacture the motor, etc., that might be able to bring a reasonably priced direct drive turntable back onto the market now to compete with the belt drive units of similar price?

Just wondering.

Thanks.

-- Howard
hodu
Halcro, IMO, the use of AC and DC to describe the servo is a little misleading as regards these turntables. The Denon uses a 3-phase AC synchronous motor, if I recall correctly. Thus it tends to be more speed stable even without a servo, compared to DC motors without a servo. The Victor and L07D use coreless motors that yes run on DC. The servo circuits in these TT's are very different from one another in design and application, I think. I guess you can lump them as AC or DC, but it does not tell you much.
Pioneer PLX-1000.

Picked one up last week at a good price with the plans to ultimately give to my daughter, however she may be waiting a while :-)

Frankly I am amazed with its excellent performance and for the $$, imo pretty unbeatable.

DD starts and stops on a dime, almost plug and play and looks cool to boot. Surprisingly heavy and nicely damped.



cheers

Cool, sounds good. If I didn't already have the Technics SL-1210 M5G, I probably would check that out...