Numark TT-200 Direct Drive Turntable

[Gary 0]

Well Connected Down Under

What was nice to note, was that the mains, earth/ground, and audio connectors were all separate cables, not permanently, internally connected, like the good ol’ Technics SL1210’s. Whilst separate connectors and leads add extra points of potential failure (due to all those solder connections), sooner, or later, you’ll need to change the leads due to all that wrapping, and unwrapping of leads at every gig. All the TT-200 connectors are well hidden and protected, in an angled, recessed bay, under the turntable. The leads were easy to run in any direction from the connector plates, due to the rubber feet holding the deck above the desktop. I was pleased to note that under each side of the turntable, is a large solid feeling, handle-like recess, easily large enough for five chubby fingers to get a secure hold on any of the four sides, for lifting, or positioning the turntable.

 

Clock all them buttons

The TT-200 has one or two surprises with regards to its layout of buttons, switches and features. To explain their layout it words, Imagine please, the turntables platter to be a clockface, 12 at the top, 6 at the bottom etc.

 

Power up

At 1 o’clock is the power button, The power up switch is a simple push on/push off affair, located just 5 cm’s away from the base of the tone arm. Despite its locality to the tone arm, no discernible noise, or interference manifested itself from the power switch, which is halo’d by a red circle, which illuminates whilst the power switch is on.

 

Tone-arm terror?

At 2 o’clock is the tone arm base, which features the normal lockable height adjustment for the entire tone arm assembly. When I was reading through the specifications for this turntable, I admit that I was more that a little concerned at a possible loss of sound quality due to whatever connectors Numark were going to use to enable the inter-changeable tone arm (between Straight or S-Shaped) to work. I had visions of copper pressure contacts (like the one’s that hold fuses into mains plugs).

 

I needn’t have worried, the inter-changeable tone arms use the same 4 pin, screw thread connectors as most turntables use between their tone-arm and their headshells. All nice and secure. For the curious, peering at tiny, thumbnail, internet pictures of the TT-200, the “join” for the tonearms is about 2 cms behind the tonearm clamp that keeps the tone-arm clamped in the rest position during transit.

At 4 o’clock, there’s the Pitch slider, its dipless, and also, unfortunately numberless except at the extreme ends, where +10% and –10% are shown.

 

At the 5 o’clock position is the Quartz lock light – this does a very simple job, pressing this button brings the pitch/speed of the track to absolute zero, regardless of where the pitch slider is (+ or -). A small LED adjacent to the centre of pitch slider glows green (instead of red) for when the pitch is at zero, regardless of whether Zero was achieved by the Quartz lock button, or placing the pitch slider at zero.

 

At the 5 o’clock position are 2 push buttons for speed selection. On power-up, one of the speed lights illuminate. Now think, this is a DJ turntable, specially designed for DJ’ing, by a company that is only(?) known for DJ equipment, playing load of DJ records, eg: 12inch singles mainly. So, what speed does the deck power up in, by default? 45rpm? WRONG!!! Its 33rpm (possibly 33.33rpm, but the button just says 33). True, you can select 45rpm by simply pushing one button, or select 78rpm, by pressing both buttons. Two the right of the two speed push buttons, is a round logo, stating “Direct Drive”, in a circle . This looks suspiciously like a blanking panel for the location of another button (78rpm maybe) on other models/variations.

 

Just left of the Speed selection buttons is an innocent looking phono socket, its inner stub coloured White, just like the Left channel of a piece of audio equipment. Unlike audio equipment sockets however, this socket kicks out 4.7 volts. This is actually the socket for a removable Target/Cueing light. Someone would have to be exceptionally dull-witted, or drunk, to run a phono lead out of this socket and into the lovely sensitive phono sockets of a mixer, but the fact remains, the connector used for this target light, makes it possible. Using a “common” socket aside, this style of Target light offers several benefits. Its instantly replaceable, it can be twisted to point at any part of the record, which proved useful in really lighting up track separation grooves on LP’s. It can also be removed completely should you find that it cramps your particular style of turntablism.

 

At the 7 o’clock and 11 o’clock positions are two identical Start/Stop buttons, although strangely, both buttons depict the symbols for Pause and Play, rather than Stop and Play. Considering the importance of these buttons, I was a little concerned with the tactile feel of the buttons, versus their actual functionality. When pressing the buttons, they sink about 6mm effortlessly and then meet a certain amount of resistance. Its only if you press harder at this point, that the switch actually does what you wanted it to do. The only switches I’ve previously encountered that behaved in a similar “half press/full press” manner, at those on electronic cameras, where you “half press” the shutter button to activate the electronics, the focusing etc, then fully press the button to take the shot.

 

Nestling between the two start/stop (play/pause?) buttons, at the 9 o’clock position, is a much more responsive Reverse button. No prizes for guessing what this button does. When the platter is going round normally, press this button, and wham! your track slurs to a stop, and slurs up to the same speed, but in reverse. Press the button again, and two slurs later, your back in normal play direction. With these rather un-time-able, un-predictable slurs, the Reverse function is definitely going to be something that you have to cue up, with the deck already in reverse mode and start playing it like that, rather than starting off Forwards and hoping to reverse on-the-beat.

 

It would have been nice to have somewhere to store the loose target light and also whichever shaped tone arm isnt in use, but overall a great deck, with a working performance comparible to the much used Technics SL1200/1210 (which was run side by side with this deck, during the review).