When the Crosley Songwriter Recordable Turntable was delivered I wasn’t that eager to open the box. Figuring out how to make things work, reading and re-reading the manual is not my cup of tea.

So after nearly two months looking at the box it was opened. After reading the manual, which was short, really short, the system was hooked up. Well, their wasn’t much to hook up, it’s all contained within the unit. The only thing to do was remove it from the packaging. I placed a record on the turntable and listened, fooling with the volume and EQ knobs. The sound was rather tinny—you don’t have bass or treble adjustments only an EQ knob with settings for Jazz, Classical, Rock or Flat. Changing the EQ setting didn’t improve the sound much.

Now to record. The manual only said to insert the appropriate CD, without indication of what makes the CD appropriate. I’ve had trouble with a CD recorder that only accepted certain CDs, not all recordable CDs worked in that unit, so I was prepared for trouble. I found several types of recordable blank CDs on hand and decided to use the cheapest type figuring that it wouldn’t work. To my amazement it did. And recording a record to CD was way too easy. You merely place the CD in the player, put a record on the turntable and hit record. When the record ends, hit stop, put another record on and hit record again. The CD burner inserts the tracks. Wow, I can record all my old 45s. But better yet, I have old 78s of my grandfather playing the violin with my mother singing. I can record them too, just as easy.

After finalizing the CD, it played back on all my CD players and once in the stereo I was able to adjust the playback sound to make it less tinny.

The unit also can record from cassette tapes and has an AM/FM radio. It’s nice looking too. It’s available at Crosley Radio for $400, but it sells on eBay for a bit less.

The pros are that this is a really easy way to record records to CD, the cons are the tinny sound.