Yamah pf 1000 or Kenwood kd 990

In your opinion, given that both turntables are in pristine condition, which one you would choose between the two?

 

Hmm, that would be kind of a tough choice...

The PF-1000 is a very nice belt drive with servo motor and bronze gunmetal subplatter, very low wow and flutter and precise speed control. It's also a suspended design, which could be good or bad depending on where you would site it. In the USA, we got the very nice looking walnut and brushed aluminum version, but you are probably looking at a black one in Europe. I'm not too keen on the tonearm design with the two separate tubes, but by all reports it works OK, and does look distinctive.

The Kenwood is a very good direct drive model with heavy aluminum structure inside tying the motor/platter and tonearm and feet together. It doesn't have much personality with the dark wood plinth in place, but is a very solid design with a good tonearm too, and does have a certain elegance that I like. It was a pretty popular deck too, so there are many around for sale, and probably isn't worth quite as much as the somewhat more esoteric Yamaha. But on the other hand, the KD-990 (and the other similar variants like KP-990, KP-1100, KP-9010) was really only a step or two down from their top of the line super decks back then, and had a nice coreless DC motor. They got some design help from Micro Seiki on this line. They seem to be pretty reliable, and the motor board is easily accessible for changing the aging electrolytics, if not done already.

I'd probably go with the Kenwood for a daily driver type turntable, the tonearm can take most of the modern medium compliance cartridges, and it is a solid deck. But I do like the Yamaha a lot, so may come down to how they look in person, and how I plan to use it.

 

Thanks for your reply; I am not enquiring about aesthetics, I like both, I am looking after opinions about sonic performance, not sure is correct saying this in English.
Thanks

 

The Kenwood manual says the turntable (and also the very similar KP1100 and variants) doesn't need to be electronically adjusted (most direct drives do), that's something to take seriously into consideration too. Also mind the tonearm's effective mass. The Kenwood is about 20 g (manual incorrectly states 17), and should sound best with low-to-mid compliance cartridges. A guy on vinylengine says the Yamaha's is 11 grams, but the manual says nothing, so could be not exact.