TEAC LP-R500A Vinyl Radio with Cassette and CD Recorder - Wood

After pondering wether to buy or not to buy for about a month I finally decided to purchase this Teac LP-R500. It seemed a lot of money to lay out but as I have got numerous cassette tapes & LP's I decided after reading other reviews to buy it. It came with a fast delivery and was soon set up. I was stunned by the quality of the built in speakers, expecting them to be a bit tinny, but far from it. They are better than my Pioneer speakers!! As for operating it the book of instructions is quite clear, a bit like going back to when you had your first record player I found, but it was fun. I did wonder why I couldn't get my cassette tape to play, but found I had not pressed the button twice (read the instructions instead of going straight in). I also didn't twig the recording set up from cassette to cd until I read the instructions again, doh! Having tried it out in every department I was extremely pleased with it, and it is worth every penny. It is an excellent music centre all round and pleasing to use and to listen to. Top job.Updated Jan 2013 - Having now used the Teac extensively over the past months I would like to share a couple of thoughts with you about it. It has worked faultlessly throughout and I am still more than happy with it. My only slight quibbles about it are that the tape deck would have been better if it had a tape counter on it, and my only other item is that I would have liked the fast forward/rewind to be a bit faster, as they seem to take a while to rewind a C90 tape. I did a lot of rewind/forwarding to get certain tracks off the tapes in order to compile the best of them which worked very well, but was a bit tedious. As I said a counter would have been useful. But overall the unit is a delight to listen to with a lovely tone wether it be radio, tape or vynal. Hope this additional info helps.

Bought this after reading reviews on Amazon and on the web. I have awarded the unit four stars, would have been five if the turntable had been a better quality. People have criticised the quality of the turntable, yes it is very plasticy and there are no adjustments that can be made but, it does produce a good sound. In fact the sound through the internal speakers is very good and through a stand alone external amp the sound is even better. Recordings from vinyl to CD-RW are really good with a good tonal range as are recordings from cassette tapes. The instruction manual is first class and the recording process is quite straightforward. The turntable speed seems to be accurate as the vinyl playback and recording sounds faultless.The unit itself isn't very pretty, in fact I think it is ugly but, it does a great job of copying your vinyl and tape collections so you can digitise them. I wouldn't use this as my primary sound system, and wouldn't use it as my main deck for playing vinyl. I had a Stanton T92 USB vinyl deck (which cost more than this unit) for my vinyl records and copying duties but it was a bit of a pain using the computer and Audacity software, whereas this system is simplicity itself. Set the system up, play and copy to cd-rw then transfer to your iTunes library, simples.If you are new to vinyl and don't want to go down the hi fi separates route, or you are someone who has a collection of old vinyl & cassettes which you want to to digitise then this in my opinion is a first class product which will do the job nicely, but for me my primary vinyl & cd playback is my separates system.To summarise, a first class copying and playback unit, simple to set up and use and does exactly what you want it to do. I haven't set the radio up and it doesn't have DAB so can't comment on the radio quality.

Not finalising completelyIt can play the recordings only in Its own cd drive. No other cd player can read it

This is a rather bulky but not unattractive piece of 'electronic furniture' - the bulk being due to the fairly large inbuilt stereo speakers that make up a lot of the chassis.I bought it mainly to replace an old turntable and amp and to enable me to digitise my cassette and vinyl collection onto CD and then MP3 format. I have not actually burned any disks yet but I have connected it to my Klipsch iPod speaker dock for much better sound output. I have tested it with playing several LPs, cassettes and also listening to FM radio, and so far I am very happy. The inbuilt speakers are good, but an external speaker system is even better.I am looking forward to burning my music collection to CD-RWs and then on to MP3 on the PC, iPod etc.and I will update this posting once I have done so.My verdict so far is that it is a high quality unit at a fair price and of course with Amazon's usual excellent service.