There’s no denying that so-called “suitcase” record players are stylish and would look pretty awesome on a shelf or mantle. Even better, you can pick up a cheap one from your local supermarket these days, and all the kids are getting into vinyl records again, so why not?
Well, I’ll tell you why not, and believe me, there’s more than one reason.
Suitcase turntables trade precision for portability
It’s not a good deal
The defining feature of a suitcase record player is that it comes in a little suitcase shell. It’s portable! The whole idea is that you and your friends can go to the park and drink equally cheap wine while you watch people throw frisbees to the crackling and popping sound of a vinyl record.
Even if you don’t want to take it anywhere, it’s great to have it all self-contained. The speakers, amps, and preamp are all built in. It’s plug-and-play, and who doesn’t like that?
The problem is that good turntables depend on precision. A proper setup isolates vibrations, maintains consistent speed, and uses a carefully balanced tonearm to keep the stylus stable in the groove. Suitcase players cut corners on nearly all of these fronts.
We’re talking cheap and light platters that do nothing to dampen vibration, motors that lack the precision for consistent speed, and tonearms that are little more than plastic imitations of the real thing. By themselves, these issues aren’t enough to damage your expensive records, but it does give you an idea of the class of product we’re looking at here.
- Brand
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Audio-Technica
- Built-in Pre-amp
-
Yes
An entry-level inexpensive turntable that will treat your records right and sound good while doing it.
Tracking Force is the silent record killer
Harder, stronger, worse.
A record player’s tracking force is effectively how hard the stylus is pressing down into the record’s groove. You’ll find all sorts of recommendations for optimal tracking force on the internet. The goal is to have enough force that the stylus stays in its lane, but not so much that you’re turning your record player into a vinyl-shredding lathe.
Those in the know peg the right number somewhere between 1.5 and 2 grams. The problem is that some suitcase players tip the scales at 4.5g of tracking force or more. I’ve seen some Redditors report as much as 8g! This is more than enough to cause significant wear on your records, and given how much some records cost these days, you want to make them last, not chew through them.
On a decent record player, you can carefully adjust the tracking force using the counterweight and an adjustment system, as shown in this video.
Cheap suitcase players often don’t have any of this, so while you can measure that insane tracking force, it’s not like you can change it. You can just watch the stylus plow through those tiny hills and valleys instead of gently tracking them.
Cheap styli make a bad situation worse
Or is that “styluses?”
Speaking of the stylus, even if the tracking forces were perfect, the quality and nature of the old needle are just as important. Generally, the stylus tip in a good turntable will be diamond. As you know, diamond is one of the hardest substances known to us, and so it has excellent durability.
Cheap turntables tend to have sapphire stylus tips, which is much less durable. An order of magnitude less. I’ve seen numbers between 20 and 50 hours of playback before sapphire needs to be replaced, and even a fresh sapphire tip doesn’t sound as good as diamond.
Of course, you can replace the sapphire stylus with a diamond one, but if you’re spending money to upgrade your cheap record player, maybe you should simply have bought a more expensive one in the first place.
Skipping, mistracking, vibration, resonance, and poor isolation add extra wear
Miss me with this nonsense
Mistracking happens when the stylus can’t properly follow the groove. Instead of staying planted, it partially lifts or bounces, especially during bass-heavy sections or on slightly warped records.
In some of these players, in a bid to make them more compact, the tone arm is too short, so when it reaches the end of the record, it starts dragging on one side of the groove instead of being properly centered. That’s bad!
Since you have speakers built into the same enclosure, and you have a cheap and thin platter, the record is more prone to play poorly because the stylus isn’t isolated from the vibration. Again, more wear and less fidelity.
How to protect your vinyl without breaking the bank
If you (for some reason I don’t understand) really want to listen to your music by dragging a needle through a grooved plastic disc, then you don’t have to spend a fortune to do it safely.
An entry-level turntable with a proper tonearm, adjustable counterweight, and a decent cartridge will treat your records far more gently. You don’t need audiophile gear. Just something designed with correct tracking in mind. If you already have a suitcase player, just don’t play any records on it you actually care about.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
