An experience that surprised the heck out of me!
NO WAY!
A turntable for (mmpf-nine) Bucks?
LESS than 99, much less than 99, MUCH less than some big box retailers want for it at 149 bucks!
If you get one, DO NOT fall for the inflated prices at Amazon or Walmart!
Crosley sells these direct at crosleyradio.com, with shipping included, for (ahem) bucks. NUTS!
On to the Crosley C3 and how it performs:
Direct from Crosley's website, the C3 is too cheap to be good and true.
It was so cheap, that since I have no fun otherwise (I don't even spend gas money for the 16 mile trip to town more than twice a year!), I spent money I really don't have in my disabled budget, to order one just for giggles.
The bad part,
which is bad and not to be under-estimated!
I was skeptical when I looked at images, and proven correct, but was still surprised about how badly designed and space consuming the really HUGE base of the machine is.It looks pretty and unusual, but there are good reasons to package a turntable in the usual boring squarish case, instead of the 3 legged giant base, that could be inspired by a "Cylon" base-ship straight from the newer Battlestar Galactica series!
Frankly, at a required almost coffee-table size of 16 inches by 16 inches, most people will be hard pressed to find a spot to put this beast in a normal entertainment shelf!
So off it went into the library nook on the floor to check it out, while I mulled over how to stack it onto my secondary system.
Sitting on a box on the floor, I began scratching my head.
Did I want to keep this monster, which on pictures looks so small and basic, but in real life needs too much space?
At least I could see, how good the drive is on this thing.
The surprisingly good part
- good and steady speed and dead quiet!
So how can it be, that a turntable I got for LESS than a hundred bucks is totally superior with its el-cheapo DC-motor to a SIX hundred dollar machine with a buzzing noise from its AC-motor?
I am not kidding here! I had to tame the motor buzzing noise on my formerly 600 dollar Music-Hall MMF-2.2 LE (the model has been defunct for many years now) by installing some damping foam under its motor-mount suspenders, and during quiet passages, I can still hear it buzzing away. The Crosley C3 is simply dead quiet out of the box. The Crosley is 1/10 the cost of the Music-Hall (which even used still sells at high prices), and needs no add-ons to control noise.
To be fair, Music-Hall and Pro-Ject have ditched their AC motors and moved on to DC motors, so the buzzing should be a thing of the past, while they do have superior arms, which open a new world in sound!
Breaking out my moby (my cell phone!) with the "RPM speed and wow" app installed, I put a styrofoam block on the spindle for a flat surface, the phone on top of it, and began repeat measurements.
Steady speed is most important, and the old DIN standard we know from the 70s specified better than 0.2% as a minimum. Today's turntables sadly often do not even meet that, so I heard a drum-whirl, while I prepared to measure the C3!
The wow and flutter I measured was excellent, and was on par with my AC-synchronous motor driven Dual belt drives and the Music-Hall MMF-2.2LE.
I got a very consistent 0.11% wow and flutter, with extremes as low as 0.08%, and only a very few worst measurements at 0.16%. This puts the C3 solidly into good standing for its drive performance, and the machine was dead quiet when playing vinyl, so both wow/flutter and rumble of the drive are really good, especially for its price, that normally doesn't even buy the Audio Technica cartridge by itself (with a Rega sticker on it, but more about that later)!
So it was steady and quiet, but was it on the correct speed?
The drive was running at 34 rpm instead of 33.333, but that is within acceptable tolerances of only 2%. Most people cannot detect the pitch being off at only 2%, and running a wee fast gives music a bit faster and thus livelier rhythm, so faster is better than too slow, which sounds a wee lame. Many turntables run at close to 34 rpm out of the box, so this is no reason to niggle here.
The DC motor of the C3 is actually THE familiar looking standard DC motor (an EG530SD series with built in speed control) you find in practically all DC motor belt drive turntables today, so knowing the beastie, I adjusted it to 33.5.
Adjusting these things with just their internal trimmers is a very sensitive and twitchy business requiring patience, so I will NOT disclose how I did it. If you are adept at tweaking electronics, you will know what to do, but if you need instructions, you are better off just spinning at 34 rpm and tapping your foot a bit faster!
The other good part
- surprisingly good sound!
One thing here:
The included 25 dollar cartridge by itself, the AT3600L, is sold with a Rega sticker as the Rega Carbon for a whopping 60 to 80 bucks, more than I paid for this whole turntable with everything.
Rega does include free snake oil though ... never mind ...
So getting a built-in phono-preamp at all at this price is good enough as an emergency hold-over, until you can buy a better one as an outboard unit. People seem to like the Rolls VP29 preamp you can get for about 50 bucks, and ART also has one on that price level, but I'd rather get the ART Precision for a few dollars more. Skip the Music-Hall for 100 bucks, because it is the Rolls VP29 preamp at double the price!
My own phono-preamps are either built in with my vintage receivers, or I run either of the following:
1 ) a $200 Pro-Ject Phono-Box-S2
2 ) a $80 Technolink TC-760LC you can buy at Amazon or at phonopreamps.com
Frankly, if you don't already have a stereo system, and are lucky enough to get just about any old fully functional receiver with a phono-input for under 150 bucks, you get a better deal!
Connecting the C3 to my vintage SAE-Two R3C receiver, I first tried the C3's own internal phono-preamp and used the auxiliary input on the receiver.
Most people nowadays have no phono-preamp input, just some computer speakers, or some iPod speaker thingy, so testing the C3's built in preamp is valid.
So through the built in phon-preamp, the C3 sounds tinny and very bright, like somebody turned the bass off.
With the AT3600L cartridge being a wee dull compared to others, this is not necessarily bad, and you can get used to it. The neighbours will certainly like you for not thumping them with your moozak!
Keeping in mind, that is is basically a free preamp you get as a bonus, it is a tolerable situation.
However, connecting the cable to the phono-preamp on the receiver, the sound suddenly became rich and full.
This C3 was suddenly on par with my old HiFi tables from the 70s, and sounded as good as my Dual 510 or 1242, I kid you not.
At WAY under 100 dollars brand new, I do not expect it to perform as well as my Music-Hall, which has a much better arm and a cartridge/stylus combo costing 10 times as much as the AT3600L, but that this el-cheapo can compete with my vintage Duals, and thus with other legends, like old Technics, Sony, Yamaha, Pioneer, and other machines we used to drool over in the 70s, is remarkable!
Unexpected convenience!
The C3 came up with an unexpected surprise!
Seeing the OFF-33-45 switch, I expected a fully manual machine. Turn the rotary switch to 33 or 45, one expects the machine to start rotating, and to turn it off, one expects having to turn off the switch.
Not so!
Turning to 33 does nothing, until you move the arm from the resting hook!
Now it spins!
But wait! When the record is done, and the arm moves into the idle part of the inner groove, the machine stops spinning!
While it does not lift the arm, the automatic stop is a comforting thought, in case you fall asleep (Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata even narcotised the Muppets!), or the dog needs out while the record is playing, so there is no wear on the stylus when the music is done!
I have been drooling over stereo gear pamphlets since I was a teen in the glorious 70s.
The Crosley C3 looks admittedly a bit cheap, but no more so, than some vintage tables did in their day.
Mind you, I don't grok any complaints about fit and finish, because for WAY UNDER 100 bucks, it is insane to expect a piano-laquer finish, but the machine is still as good looking as a piece of Ikea furniture!
In red, it is frankly fun to look at, and I am happy I got a red sample, instead of a boring black one 
Most importantly, if you don't need the internal preamp, it sounds as good as any vintage turntable did in the old hey-days, that sold up to maybe the 300 dollar mark, which is remarkable.
Those old machines in the sub 300 dollar class were fine gear (300 dollars was a LOT of money then!), and then there was that gear above, when the curtains opened, and something magical happened, that mortal working people most likely never got to hear at their set budgets.
Really excellent HiFi has never been as affordable, as it is today, but this unbelievably cheap machine, which in mid 70s dollars would have cost me (hold on to your chair) a measly TEN bucks, is an unbelievable value.
I keep hinting at how cheap they are at Crosley's own sale site, because I am that flabberghasted!
I just tossed out the box, and tomorrow morning is recycling day. So, yes, I am keeping it. I can get far more for my vintage turntables, than I paid for this Crosley with its over-sized foot-print, and it sounds as good as my vintage machines.
Some words about Crosley's long road so far
A turntable that won't scratch and destroy your records?
Really?
PANIC!!!!! A WHAT?
A CROSLEY????
The panic is for good reason, because Crosley has a hard earned killer reputation for killing records!
Crosley worked on this reputation very hard over the last 30 years (since 1992), with their suitcase players equipped with so called crystal pickups, to alert every singly HiFi fan in every corner of the known universes, that these are worse than any Fisher-Price make-believe record player ever sold in the 60s!
The red crystal cartridges that Crosley uses, track so heavy and are tipped so badly, they will ruin records after just a few plays.
But remarkably, a few things happened in the last few years, that changed the picture.
Most notably, Crosley got help from Pro-Ject, to design their new entries into low level high-end players, the C6, C8, and C10, with the $300 or so C10 a close copy of Pro-Ject's basic Debut machine with a very similar looking arm and an Ortofon OM5e cartridge. The arm is not a carbon clad, just the basic Pro-Ject aluminium arm (yes, an actual Pro-Ject arm!), but still very respectable!
The cheaper C6 and C8 save a buck or more for a lower price-tag, being equipped with the same arm you find on practically all Chinese tables from 99 up to about 700 bucks or even more, and sporting the 25 dollar Audio Technica AT3600L cartridge. The AT3600L is the basic cartridge that also ships with lower end Rega turntables, but with a Rega sticker as the 60 to 80 dollar "Rega Carbon", so it is cheap, but has gained a lot of respect. It is, whether us freak HiFi nuts like it or not, the industry standard, by which sound and quality at the entry level are measured now.
With that, somebody must have also had a quiet talk with Crosley behind the building near a dumpster, because I have noticed, that, if you pay attention, Crosley now offers even some of their formerly horrid suitcase "designer" turntables with a magnetic cartridge, the everywhere-present Audio Technica AT3600L, instead of the red vinyl-shredder!
You still have to watch out like a hawk for those red vinyl-shredding crystal pickups that come with too many of Crosley's other machines, but if you get the "moving magnet" or "magnetic" cartridge, and it looks like an AT3600L, or even the earlier mentioned Ortofon OM5e, then a Crosley is no longer the horror machine it was.
OH! Have I mentioned Crosley's OUTRAGEOUS audacity of charging an unbelievable 59 bucks for this machine? Shipping INCLUDED!
