I totally forgot to do a write up about this turntable! It's a beauty and a beast at the same time. This here my friends is a quality turntable. Direct drive and purely manual!
This was one of the more expensive Kenwood turntables available. It featured Kenwood's faux marble to not only add weight but to control vibrations. It's a pretty weighty table. And, in my opinion, it's not too shabby to look at either. The marble gives it that upscale look.
It was also called the KD-500 if you didn't want the tone arm. Why? It's because people back in the day wanted to hot-rod or modify their turntables. Generally speaking, in most cases many just swapped out the tone arms for a different one like a SME. This one, however, is the KD-550 using the Kenwood stock tone arm, which is pretty good too! It does have VTA for those chunkier cartridges and is a well made arm too!
It's also dead simple to work on and reliable. Again, sometimes simplicity is best. Good torque motor, heavy platter with a great tone arm what's not to love? Maybe a super nice cartridge to boot? That Osawa OS-300MP is one heck of a cartridge! From what I can find, it was top of that line up and it sounds superb! We at Audioless didn't expect much but, boy we were wrong. Very warm and dynamic, similar to the Grado sound but more refined. It sounds just like my Nagaoka cartridges and that is a good sign as Nagaoka bought/owned Osawa. So they are really superb cartridges.
Overall, it's in great condition. The only major flaw is the dust cover as one hinge is blown. This is a very common problem with this hinge design. But, doesn't affect the reliability of the player, just remove the dust cover and play!
This was one of the more expensive Kenwood turntables available. It featured Kenwood's faux marble to not only add weight but to control vibrations. It's a pretty weighty table. And, in my opinion, it's not too shabby to look at either. The marble gives it that upscale look.
It was also called the KD-500 if you didn't want the tone arm. Why? It's because people back in the day wanted to hot-rod or modify their turntables. Generally speaking, in most cases many just swapped out the tone arms for a different one like a SME. This one, however, is the KD-550 using the Kenwood stock tone arm, which is pretty good too! It does have VTA for those chunkier cartridges and is a well made arm too!
It's also dead simple to work on and reliable. Again, sometimes simplicity is best. Good torque motor, heavy platter with a great tone arm what's not to love? Maybe a super nice cartridge to boot? That Osawa OS-300MP is one heck of a cartridge! From what I can find, it was top of that line up and it sounds superb! We at Audioless didn't expect much but, boy we were wrong. Very warm and dynamic, similar to the Grado sound but more refined. It sounds just like my Nagaoka cartridges and that is a good sign as Nagaoka bought/owned Osawa. So they are really superb cartridges.
Overall, it's in great condition. The only major flaw is the dust cover as one hinge is blown. This is a very common problem with this hinge design. But, doesn't affect the reliability of the player, just remove the dust cover and play!
