Good automatic TT's

In the late '70's and early '80's Bang & Olufsen made the 4000 - 4004 series of turntables, these were belt driven, to minimize the noise and were fully automatic. The later series of 8000 were direct drive and never sounded as quiet as the 4000 series. The 4000 are plentiful on the used market $100-$300, they are fairly reliable, B & O still sells parts for the units, but only to authorized repair shops. B & O stopped manufacturing the cartridges, but Soundsmith in NY is manufacturing new cartridges. They also can refurbish a older turntables to guarantee a long life.

I'd go for

1) my fave idea, an Expressimo lifter. I wouldn't want to give up the resolution of my high-end TT just to save getting up. When I think I'm woozy enough to let the runout groove play for an hour, I try to put on a CD so I can drift off easy.

2) a Thorens with auto-lift ( several models have it including my old TD146 ). However the arms on these are their weak point and they're near impossible to change because of the lifting mechanism.

3) an Elac changer for nostalgia's sake. Auto everything! Mine was reliable, I played lots of music on it when I was 20, but I remember it as rumbly and low-detail compared with today.

Wow! More great suggestions. There's a B&O 4004 on ebay but others must know its value as the price is quite high.
I like the idea of small and simple. "Martinis and music" night or better still "Vodka and vinyl" - I can hear the music and feel the ice cold shaker......

Circa 1980 Yamaha PX-2 occasionally appear used for
< $500.00.

Very cool, well made turntable, linear tracking and fully automatic - perfect for mind altered listening sessions and quite good sounding. Class A in its day (?) which included many good turntables, Linn Sondek, Oracle etc.

The only difficulty might be service or perhaps parts if the linear tracking belt needed replacement or something so you could call ahead to Yamaha first.

Otherwise, the little auto lifters would be find.

I just never liked passing out and having my tweaky belt drive turntable spinning all night.....

Good luck.

Thanks! I'll look for one. I picked up a good tip on another thread - use a front load CD drawer as a drink holder while changing records.