We like the Music Hall Stealth Turntable. Here’s why…

The blackness of the Music Hall Stealth turntable gets your attention the moment you lay eyes on it; it’s clearly named ‘Stealth’ for a reason. It looks like a turntable Darth Vader would own… or Nigel from Spinal Tap.

The Stealth is substantial and weighty, with a multi-layered plinth, heavy platter and large feet. It looks very well made. When you start to look more closely, the Stealth’s details are also impressive.

It’s a three-speed turntable, all adjusted by touch-sensing buttons. The three-speeds on offer include the (reasonably rare) 78RPM speed for shellac discs popular 70 to 80 years ago. 78s speed discs need a dedicated stylus type to play them – but that’s not an issue, as the Stealth offers a detachable Headshell with a standard SME bayonet mount. You can swap a 78-compatible cartridge/head-shell onto the tonearm in seconds. Cartridges for 78 speed discs are still readily available, but if playing your Great Grandfather’s 78s is not a priority, you can still use the detachable Headshell feature for different types (or sounds) of cartridges.

It’s Direct Drive - not Belt Drive 

This means the motor is mounted directly under the platter’s spindle. There are benefits to both DD and BD methods, but more consistent speed and fast start-up are the main benefits of a Direct Drive. This is Music Hall’s first DD turntable.

Studying the mount of the tone arm you’ll notice three controls. There is the (most common) counterweight with scale, which almost every turntable has; an anti-skating dial (quite common, yet many turntables sill use hanging weight instead) and then – there is a Vertical Tracking Alignment control. This is not common at all, and it makes large, very noticeable differences to the tonearms overall vertical position. It can even be altered while playing.

The rear panel of the Stealth has RCA audio socket outputs rather than a permanently hard-wired cable, so you can upgrade the supplied cable to one of your own choosing. Another not-so-common feature of the Stealth is auto-stop, which can be turned on or off via a switch on the rear panel. It will even power off after 20 minutes sitting idle.

Here’s one unusual aspect of the Stealth

It doesn’t come with a dust cover! It’s not an optional extra either. It does, however come with a black bag/cloth cover instead, which neatly covers the turntable completely.

The icing on the cake

The icing on the cake of all of these these features and designs is the Ortofon 2M Blue phono cartridge which is included in the price and is factory mounted and adjusted.

It’s ready to use out of the carton. Of course, there IS some set-up still required to calibrate the weighting of the cartridge, but it’s not hard and you have to do it only once, assuming you don’t swap the Headshell to a different weighted cartridge.

For more on turntable set-up, read our guide here: 

How to set up your turntable

All of this comes with the Music Hall Stealth turntable, for an  affordable price point of  only $2,399RRP and it’s available now.

For more information on this product, please see our product page