What I love about this sleeper direct drive turntable.
Last summer, we snuck away for a family vacation in Gatlinburg, TN. Whenever I’m out of town, I always look at local selling sites for any interesting finds. I found the above turntable on Craigslist and scheduled a time to safely meet with the sellers to buy.
The JVC JL-F50 is a fully automatic, direct drive turntable released in 1977. Personally, I love the overall black and silver look of the turntable and jokingly called it “Darth Vader’s turntable” while it was in my possession.
A few weeks ago, while scrolling through Craigslist, I stumbled on a listing for a Pioneer PL-518 turntable that was a few months old. I emailed the seller who got back to me and we worked out a price and a time to meet. Then things got weird…
First, I own a Pioneer PL-560 turntable that I bought about five years ago. It was my first vintage turntable and a pretty good find for the time, considering how much they’ve increased in price. It’s a direct drive model with automatic stop/start features and metered speed control. The dust cover on my unit still looks brand new. I haven’t had a single issue with the table in the last five years. Owning the PL-560 is what piqued my interest in buying the PL-518.
Back to my story…when I emailed the seller and finished negotiating the price, I asked him where he’d like to meet. He replied, “Don’t you want to listen to it?”. I was willing to risk that it played fine but I replied yes, agreeing to meet him at his home.
This is where things get interesting. He then emailed me his address and said, “After you listen we can head to the bank.” Huh? That puzzled me. Why would we need to go to the bank? So I asked him that question to which he replied, “No offense but I don’t know you or your money.”
At this point I decided I might not want to bother even going to his house. I didn’t really have time to go there and the bank just to pick up a turntable. I asked if we could simply meet at the bank and he said yes.
We met at the bank and the elderly gentleman said I could look at the turntable in his truck and then we would go inside the bank where I would give the teller my money and they would confirm it was not counterfeit. I agreed and when we entered the bank, I noticed the confusion on the teller’s face. I gave her my cash, she confirmed it was real and then the seller asked me to sign a document stating I was buying the turntable “as is” and for the agreed upon price.
Now, I’m all for safety and meeting at the bank was actually a great idea. But going inside to confirm my money was not counterfeit and signing a “contract” for the used item was definitely new for me. In the end, I got the table home and it worked great.
So let’s talk about why I love the PL-518 as a turntable in case you find one in the wild and want to consider purchasing one.
First, the only negative thing about this table is the isolation feet which will most likely have rotted off. This was the case on my table, something I was aware of when purchasing, and seems pretty common from my research.
Thankfully, the feet are easy to replace. I ordered a set of four feet from Ken’s Vintage Audio on eBay for just $44 shipped.
One of the new feet I installed on the table to replace the rotten ones.
The table is direct drive and technically a manual table, but I like to call it “semiautomatic” instead. Pioneer calls it manual because you have to manually set the tone arm on the record to begin playback, however, at the end of the record, the arm will return on its own to rest.
The PL-518 also features a S-shaped tonearm with a removable headshell. I’ve been experimenting a lot during the pandemic with listening to different cartridges and greatly appreciate a removable headshell when having to install a new cart.
Lastly, and something I’ve never encountered before, this turntable came with a leather cover that you can leave rested on the table when not using.
I found some PL-518 tables online where the metallic looking veneer on the plinth had been removed and replaced with a wooden veneer that looked beautiful. I’m not ready to apply veneer to a turntable yet (I’ve only tackled veneer on receivers) but that would be a wonderful upgrade to a solid performing turntable.
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