Right, just to add my tupenneth worth...
I bought a new pair of decks this week and in the end I went for the Stanton ST 150, the only other contender in the end was the Stanton STR8 150, but I'm not a scratchaholic so I went for the s-shaped arm.
On getting them home I've got to say that I'm happy with them as well. First thing about them is they weigh a ton; they are about 5kg heavier than the Technics which is a far old fucking weight. They look the business as well, they were definitely Amelie's faves in the looks department too.
I've absolutely no problems with how they play either. I slapped 2 records on and mixed them absoltely no problem. In fact, if I'm honest, I'm not entirely sure if there was any real difference between them and my Technics; I could just beat match on them instantly no problem. If I go back on a pair of Technics then I'm confident that I could beat match on them staright away as well. I'm not entirely sure what you boys are doing in this respect but I had no problems. As for scratching, I'm no maestro but these bastards can really hold the groove, certainly more so than my Technics (and I may be mistaken, but more than my Technics could when they were brand new).
The stanton's definitely score highly with features as well, the best one of which is the changable pitch range (+/- 8%, +/- 25%, and +/- 50%). That's one major major bonus over the Technics. The other major feature I like is the reverse (although I'll probably get bored with that). I also like the separate leads, as I always found the in build leads of the Technics to be a pain in the arse.
The Stanton is also just plain different to the Technics though, for instance there is no separate earth lead (it gets it's earth from the mains). This is a bonus in some respects, but when I first wired up the decks I found there was an annoying hum, I've put this down to using a extension lead into an extension lead which is how I power my decks. The good thing about these decks though is that I can round this because they can be configured to have a line out rather than a phono out (presumedly they have their own phono stage in the deck), so these have just gone into the line in of the mixer and everything's hunky dory. Another difference is the variable start / brake settings. I don't really see the point in the variable start time; you press start you want it to start straight away, you don't want it to take 3 seconds to start! The variable brake time seems OK in theory, but to be honest I just want to to stop with the same vrrschom as the Technics, and to achieve this isn't so straight forward as the deck does a slow down then immediate stop rather than an absolute gradual brake.
I can't see me using the other features on the decks, the digital out maybe in time, but not the digital key control. But hey they're not going to annoy me by being there.
That's my opinion of the Stanton's though. Who knows, a year or so from now I may be cursing their operation, or perhaps they'll just be knackered from age, but for the min they're defintely better than the Technics IMHO.
they look like something that should be in a todlers bedroom 'My First HiFi'
