Hawthorne Stereo — Local services in Seattle

I was in the market for a turntable and speakers and this store was recommended to me by a friend. He is an audiophile so I was hesitant about going in, since I don't know anything and frankly have no interest in the 'arms race' many self-described audiophiles seem to participate in. Comparison is the thief of joy.

I was very pleasantly surprised by how down to earth and kind the staff at this store are (shout out to Kurt and Alden!). They obviously know their stuff but never made me feel silly for asking what were surely silly questions. The first time in the shop, Kurt setup several different turn tables for me, both new and used ones, with some Kanto YU4 speakers and let me try them out in their listening room. It was really fun to test out the different turn tables and this helped me settle pretty quickly on the ProJect Debut Evo 2. It's a really beautiful table and the sound was fantastic.

I needed some speakers that could work with my Roland keyboard (via my laptop AUX) in addition to the turntable, without having to remove RCA cables to switch between use cases. Given my budget, the Kanto YU4s were a very happy surprise. It's been fun to finally get to practice piano without headphones. I realize I do have to be really careful about the line vs phono switch, so I don't accidentally blow them out :) But for the price point and not needing a separate pre-amp unit for my already crowded office/music room, its a huge win.

On a final note, the Kanto stands are shockingly robust. They remind me of a Rogue squat rack in construction, but the detailing is obviously more finesse than fitness. I have little nieces and nephews that run around destroying things in my house but I think they will be very hard pressed to knock these bad boys over!

Thanks so much Kurt and Alden for all your help. I am so glad I visited your store instead of cold ordering a Fluance setup online based on Wirecutter. Y'all will be my audio...

I was looking for a specific turntable that's currently in very short supply, apparently. Pretty far down the results page I came across Hawthorne Stereo, who I wasn't at all familiar with but showed the turntable I was looking for in stock.

Full disclosure, I did a little investigating to make sure they existed, and more importantly to be certain this was their actual website. I mention this because there are a surprising amount of fake retailers you'll find on search engines, and that includes ones with sponsored ads.

After ordering the same turntable from two different online retailers, one being fairly large and well-known, only to receive emails the next day telling me they didn't actually have it in-stock and wouldn't for months, I decided to email Hawthorne before placing my order. Within minutes I got a response, from an actual person, telling me they absolutely had the turntable I was looking for.

While that would be great customer service under any circumstances, it was past 2am central time, so after midnight their time.

I placed my order immediately, and the next day (actually later the same day I guess) I received a notification that it had been shipped. This probably goes without saying, but I received the turntable and couldn't be happier.

I certainly plan on making more purchases with Hawthorne Stereo, and if they have what you're looking, I recommend you do the same. While I can't promise they'll email you back in the middle of the night, I'm confident you'll receive great customer service and have an excellent...

My experience with Hawthorne can be summarized as follows: They are honest, to the point, and do excellent work.

I recently acquired two turntables via Offerup/Craigslist, one of which I was able to restore myself with the exception of a capacitor swap (A Dual 510). While they weren't able to do a recap on site, Hawthorne was very honest in saying it may not be worth the cost to do it seeing as the table was working just fine, (Honesty was appreciated).

The second table, A sony PS-X60 was most definitely worth the cost of whatever it needed as far as I was concerned. It was near mint physically but had a cueing issue that I suspected may be related to damping fluid which can be involved to replace (I didn't trust myself to repair this beauty). I dropped the turntable off at Hawthorne over the weekend and it was finished by Thursday the following week which was excellent turnaround time. They did a full service on the table (Beyond adjusting the cueing). The damping mechanism was actually working fine as well. In the end the cost was only $55 bucks which was amazing. It was such a good price that I was almost suspicious the issue was fixed I am embarrassed to say. It was most definitely fixed and the tables works as though it came out of a time machine from 1979, right from the Sony factory in Japan.

My only issue now is getting a media stand worthy of such a machine, but that's another issue. :-D

Thank...