One of the best Direct Drive decks under £200 (Citronic PD-1)

Member Name: MichaelR

Product:	Citronic PD-1
Date:	25/01/01 (1126 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Price, build, performance, good package deals

Disadvantages: Tonearm could be better

Now, these are nice decks. REALLY nice decks, and they can be yours for a very low price.

I owned a pair of these for quite some time, and they never, ever let me down, I have to say. The only reason that I still don't have them today is they got pretty much destroyed when they were sitting in the boot of my car and someone hit me up the backside with some force while I was waiting at a traffic light....

The first thing you'll notice about the PD1 is how well it is built. For such a low price, the workmanship is absolutely excellent. It looks right, it feels right, and it feels almost like a professional deck. Almost. You'd have to put this one in the "semi-pro" range, but there's very little to rival it in this price range.

The performance is also exceptionally good, better than you might expect for the price. The motor is nice and torquey, and the platter will keep turning pretty much at the speed you set it too, unless you go crazy and apply a hell of a lot of pressure, but why would you be doing that?

The pitch control is also remarkably accurate for such a cheap deck. OK, so it may start to wonder a little if you start thinking you're Sasha and attempt a full-on 10 minute mix or something, but for the majority of people who are just doing this as a hobby, it will serve you very, very well, and you'll be able to go through the beat matching process without worrying about how much flutter you have in your decks.

The start up time is pretty damn good for a deck in this range, as is the braking to the platter.

The layout is good, with the power on the strobe,(which produces a funky blue coloured dot rather than the traditional red) the start/stop under that, and the 33/45 rpm buttons and pitch control on the right.

You get all the features you would expect, i.e. +/1 10% pitch, strobe, 33/45rpm, target light, steel 45rpm adapter, anti-skate etc etc, and at only £163 incl
uding slipmats and Stanton 500AL cartridges, you really cannot go wrong.

The only slight reservation I have is the quality of the tonearm. It is the only thing on the deck that looks and feels "cheap" and unprofessional. It is actually quite stable, but you could have some minor problems if you're going to be scratching.

There's no height adjust for the tonearm either, but then there isn't one on many decks in this price range.

If you've got limited money, then you've really got to look at either this or the XL-500 mark 2 from Gemini. I think that the Gemini just edges it for me, however, there are some excellent package deals available with the PD1's, you can get two of them with a decent mixer for £400, so shop around.

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