Tonearm Design

There are two tonearm designs in turntable-land: fixed and adjustable. Entry level turnies have fixed arms because they are less expensive and easier to use. The trade off is that they are set to track heavier, which means they take a firmer needle, which are slightly harsher on your vinyl.

This design is standard for entry level turntables but in our experience there are many issues with this design and we would avoid anything but the Audio-Technia LP60x that we sell. The main problem is that most of these cheaper turntables use the little red needle pictured to the left and they just cannot handle loud records.

Modern vinyl is not only pressed louder than records from the ‘70s and ‘80s, but modern music also has far more compressed percsussion. Both of these things can kick needles out of the groove, which is what often happens with less-expensive fixed-arm turntables.

Confusingly the needle that the Audio-Technica LP60x uses is the little square one pictured directly below BUT, AT make versions that works with adjustable tone arms too. The needles are interchangeable but track at different weights, so you HAVE TO GET THE CORRECT ONE.

You can thank this guy for the confusion…;)

AT began life as a needle manufacturing company and made these for about half the turntable brands in the world, who just bunged their own model number and logo on them. Colour, brand and model number are completely irrelevant when determining which one you need. Fixed versus adjustable is the only thing you need to know.

Fixed vs Adjustable Tonearms

Every time you play a record, the diamond tip wears the plastic groove out a little bit. You want to minimise this, which is why you should always set your deck up correctlyt, keep everything clean and, in the case of fixed versus adjastable, do not want use a harsher needle on when you do not need to.