Who had a Dual turntable?
C’mon, put up your arm.
My left one is raised while I type with just my right hand. It wasn’t my Dual turntable per se… I was a kid, and the turntable was my father’s. Hell, I was all of six or seven years old, and my father had no qualms about me using that ‘table. I still remember the sleek wood, and semi-industrial design, the unique movement of the tonearm, and the ease of use. And I remember a number of my father’s friends having Dual turntables, and my friends in college who had them handed down to them from their fathers when they went off to school. They were incredibly well built, and seemed to last a long time with little to no maintenance.
I haven’t even thought about Dual for probably 25 years, they had been relegated to some unused slot of memory in my head, which had not been stirred since I saw word today that the venerable German manufacturer had launched three new turntables into the UK market.
The basic model is the full-auto MTR-15 priced at a very competitive $150 USD.
The next up the ladder, and targeted at the more discerning black-disc acolyte is the MTR-75 which sports an aluminum platter, belt-drive, vibration-damped feet, and… wait for it… a built-in moving-magnet phono stage. It’s got USB out for vinyl rips (Fremer!), and an Audio-Technica MM cartridge. All this for the competitive price point of $300 USD.
The final model unveiled by Dual is the direct-drive MTR-40. To me it seems like a more budget-friendly homage to Technics’ new 1200 line which features variable-speed control, and well, looks exactly like a black 1200.
With reports of vinyl sales exceeding 13 million in the US alone for 2016, it seems Dual is counting on the trend to continue.
–Rafe Arnott
These look like they roll off the same Hanpin OEM line as similar priced decks from Pioneer and Denon. That’s not necessarily bad. I’m sure they work well at their price points. But they are no more related to classic Dual than current Denon decks are related to my DP-80.
It would be great to see some of the classic turntable builders retool and pick up production where they left off in the early ’80s, but the prices of recent Technics turntables illustrate how expensive that is to do.