I've only heard it at a dealer's showroom, and I thought it sounded fine. If I needed 78 rpm play and a built-in phono stage, it's a model I would happily purchase. It does not sound as good to my ears as the entry-level 'tables from Music Hall, Rega, or Pro-Ject, but none of them offer the features that the AT does. Do you have an opportunity to audition one to hear how you like it? That's the best way to determine if it's going to satisfy you.
Looking at it the other way 'round, a turntable's job could be seen as being built with sufficient precision as to allow the very tiny modulations in the groove to be reproduced. The only thing that makes sound is the relative motion of the stylus to the cartridge body; if some of the stylus's energy is lost due to mechanical slop in the platter bearing, tone arm bearings, headshell/tone arm interface, etc., etc., then some musical information can be lost to that slop rather than being picked up and reproduced by your hifi. Rega makes cost-effective, good-sounding turntables in part because they don't have removable headshells or easy vertical tracking angle adjustment, both of which they believe would introduce structural compromises to their design that would result in compromises to information retrieval.
And even if they did, that doesn't mean a $2000 turntable is a better choice than a $300 turntable because that cheaper model may have features important to the buyer. A turntable like the AT LP120 offers good sound along with a host of possibly very useful features; some that I could see myself appreciating include the built-in phono stage, reverse play (that was fun to play with on my Stanton STR8-80!), easy exchange of cartridge through removable headshells, and easy pushbutton speed change for 33 1/3, 45, and 78 rpm records. As good as my Linn LP12 was at the time, I bought the Stanton because it played 78's and the Linn didn't. I bought a Denon DP-300F rather than the better sounding Rega RP1 for a bedroom system because fully automatic operation was more important to me for that application than the sound quality difference.
the Ignore function is your best friend here! I turned it off to see if I was right in guessing to whom you were replying. Of course it was just as I expected (I wonder sometimes if he used to have a Chinese girlfriend who dumped him!).
That problem has been fixed. All AT-LP120s manufactured since the beginning of 2017 have an improved anti-skating spring which provides the correct anti-skating force. You can also order the spring from Audio-Technica if you wish to retrofit it into an older LP120. The price is $1.00 plus shipping.
