I’ve found a Thorens TD150 turntable in a garage today whilst clearing out my MIL’s house. It looks like a nice piece of kit, just gotta find the turntable platter (Which should be in there somewhere, given that it’s all boxed up)

Is there anything I should be wary of destroying if I plug this in to see if it functions, bearing in mind that it’s probably not been used for at least 20 years. I assume it’s just a case of plugging it into the ext source on my hifi (it’s been ages since I used a proper turntable and I’ve forgotten about preamp etc)

Any ideas on likely value as well?

Cheers

Rich

Value is around £80 ish

IIRC that was a bit of a classic in its day and I seem to recall that there was a firm who would upgrade it for you, can’t remember who it was though

Very highly thought of turntables, very popular with vinyl junkies in Japan. It doesn’t connect to the Ext input it goes to Phono, it needs a preamp stage because the cartridge output is too low for a line-in. Your amp should have a Phono stage on it, probably MM (Moving Magnet). More sophisticated amps will have MM/MC (Moving Magnet/Moving Coil).

something like this?

Yep Bobba, can’t remember seeing the Knob on the right though, and no cartridge on the stylus.

I have a TD160 which I presume is a little younger.

great.

The righthand knob is the raise/lower knob for the tone arm. If yours doesnt have it it probably has a raise/lower lever on the arm itself. The cartridge has probably been taken off, you can get a good replacement like a Goldring or Audiotechnica from a quality hifi dealer, who would probably help with setup, which really needs to be done correctly to avoid mistracking and wearing the grooves. My old Logik DM101 has an Audiotechnica MC cart on a Zeta arm. Haven’t used it in years as the main control board’s on the fritz. Ought to get it done sometime I s’pose.

That ^^^ looks so cool!

Eeee, me dad had one of those in the 70’s. Takes me back to Pentangle, Peter, Paul and Mary etc… “If you’re going to San Francisco….”