CEC Chuo Denki ST-210

[e30_325is]

Does anybody know anything about this turntable? I seem to recall that it is a belt drive semi-automatic probably made in the 80s but I can't seem to find any info on the net.

I might be able to get my hands on one for free and I'm wondering if it is a decent table or if I should be searching for something else? The plan would be to use it to test/play more beat up thrift store finds instead of putting them on my Beogram 7000

Also, a link to a owners/service manual would be appreciated...

 

[dosmalo]

How could you possibly go wrong for free??

 

[nick12345]

I'd grab just about ANY table for free.

 

[boreas]

C.E.C. Is better known in North America for making turntables sold under other people's labels, most notably Marantz. They are, as a rule, quite respectable. They're rugged and dependable and offer very good performance. For free, I'd get it in a heartbeat.

John

 

[ETI_5000]

Probably one of their cheaper turntables, but they made plenty, and were probably one of the most prolific turntable manufacturers of the 70’s and 80’s with Technics. I think it was probably an early 80’s model. It doesn’t appear in my 1980’s price lists, which seem to jump from the ST-110 to the ST-510, so it probably wasn’t sold in Australia (or Europe, from the info on the Hi-Fi Classic website). They made many as an OEM for companies like Hitachi, Realistic (Radio Shack/Tandy) and Marantz, and they were all pretty good. For free, it's superb value for money!

They also had a Harksound brand which was one of their house brands, and the turntables were sold as “Harksound by CEC” in Europe and Australia/NZ – but they also sold other turntables (branded CDC for Aust/NZ) at the same time. You can see that Harksound was one CEC’s brands from this info on Michael Otto’s Hi-fi Classic website http://new-hifi-classic.de/Gallery_MO/thumbnails.php?album=112 - the Harksound pamphlets have the CEC International name at the bottom.

CEC did also make other hi-fi equipment which was sold in Japan, but seem to be best known outside Japan for their turntables. There’s some info on their other equipment sold in Japan here (put through the babelfish translation site, for those of us outside Japan) http://66.163.168.225/babelfish/tra...trurl=http://audio-heritage.jp/CEC/index.html (original website http://audio-heritage.jp/CEC/index.html ). Most likely they employed a lot of people in their factories, based on the number of brands they made turntables for, so they were probably pretty big.