Crosley Musician Entertainment Center (Paprika)

• Belt Driven Turntable Mechanism
• Plays 3 Speeds - 33 1/3, 45 And 78 RPM Records
• Portable Audio Ready-Simply Plug In Your Portable Audio Device Or MP3 Player
• CD Player, Cassette Deck

I decided to write this review because the only other one available really didn't do this product justice.

As of July 3rd 2010 the only customer review on this product is that of Andres Roura titled "idiotic designer." Here he complains that the lettering on the buttons that identify each feature "CD, Tape, Power, etc" are hard to read because they are the same copper color as the background they are raised on.

First of all, its not that big of a deal. Unless your eye sight is greatly diminished, you should really have no problem reading each button. Besides, after the first 3 or 4 uses, you should have each button/option memorized.

Second, to write such a negative review just because of this aspect is really unfair to the product and misleading to the people who are considering buying it. I understand that everyone is entitled to their opinions and that maybe this "shortcoming" is enough to make some people dislike the product but I just don't like it being the sole interpretation of the it on Amazon because some people use those reviews to make their minds up on certain purchases.

Personally, I very much enjoyed my turntable. I bought it about a month ago and was really worried it wouldn't be good enough or I wouldn't like it.

When I got it (quite fast shipping actually), I was pleasantly surprised. It is a very good size product. Quite sturdy, doesn't feel cheap.

I tried the radio first. The sound was awesome. That was what I was worried about the most but I was not disappointed at all. It provides a very rich a full sound.

The adapter for ipod's or other mp3's on the back was equally great. Same great sound quality. Probably my favorite feature of the whole jukebox.

The CD player is good too and even plays mp3 CD's.

The record player has a slightly softer sound but I'm guessing that is normal. (I'm not really an audiophile and don't have much experience with record players.) That said, there is something so cool about playing vintage records and seeing them spin under the needle, just awesome!

(To be fair)...

The lettering is a little faint and requires a little bending down or squinting to make out the options (at least the first couple of times.) Like I said before, though, this is not that big of a deal and doesn't detract enough from the product to really be a factor (in my opinion).

Besides the overall rating, Amazon asks for ratings on two specific aspects: Portability and Sound Quality.

Portability: Well this isn't really what this is designed or intended for so its not something you take out to every party or carry around everywhere. I assume most people will find a place for it and leave it there most of the time (bedroom, living room, etc.) That said, it is pretty lightweight so its very easy to move around if you want to. I gave it a two for portability not because you can't take it places, but because I don't think you'll really want to.

Sound Quality: Great. Its no state of the art, home theater system, but its very satisfying. It goes quite loud, louder than I expected and the sound is very rich and full. Sound is especially good with CD's, ipods, and FM/AM radio. Slightly less quality sound for records but I discussed that already (plus you can just turn the sound up a little extra). As for cassettes, I don't have any anymore (or don't know where) so I haven't tried that yet.

Overall quite happy with the purchase. I highly recommend it if you want a system that has a nice aesthetic value and is a little out of the ordinary by today's standards. (Who plays records anymore? its totally cool)

The sound is really good but if that's all you're concerned with and don't care much about the unconventional musical features, you might try something else.

Buy Crosley Musician Entertainment Center (Paprika) Now

If you actually read the reviews on this item, rather than just counting the number of stars, there is a lot more revealed about 1) the rationality of people's expectations, 2) the variance in people's perceptions and 3) how people rate an item based on what aspect of the item's performance is important to them.

Taking #1 first: This is a $125 item that plays records at 3 separate speeds; plays cassettes; plays CDs and has a radio. 99% of turntables ALONE cost more than $100 AND 90% of them require additional equipment to perform (an amplifier and speakers, minimum) which would cost a minimum of another couple of hundred dollars. People buy it and complain "Oh! The parts are plastic!" "Oh, the sound is tinny!" Well, many parts for $250 and $300 turntables are plastic AND while the sound quality is not at the audiophile level, it is not tinny at all. If you want perfection, go spend $20,000 on an entertainment system. Stop being ridiculous when you are referring to a $100 purchase.

#2: Of the reviewers who directly mention such things, half of them say the sound quality is mediocre to poor and half say it is very good to excellent. Which is it? The same product cannot be both poor AND excellent. Half the reviewers say it is cheaply made and half say it is sturdy and well-made. Which is it? All this speaks to are people's individual perceptions. Is the item a piece of useless crap? Is it a hand-crafted masterpiece? Neither. It is a decently made and functional item that is a bargain at $125, but would be over-priced at say, $300 or $400.

#3: A majority of the people who rate the item at 2 or 3 stars say that one or more functions are "very good", "pleasing" and "work perfectly", but one or more functions are "disappointing", "don't operate well" or are "poor sounding". My questions are: Do you expect (for $125) that every function of a multi-function music center will be of top quality? Maybe if you paid $1000 for everything, but be realistic. Also, what did you specifically buy the unit FOR? If you bought it for the turntable and the turntable functions well, is it tragic if the cassette player does not operate like a Tandberg? If you bought it for the CD player and it plays well, does it matter if there is a bit of a wobble in the turntable?

If you bought the unit for the radio, you are probably nuts, but if the radio works but the CD player doesn't, is it the end of the world?

Obviously, if the function or functions you bought the unit for do not work to your satisfaction, bring it back and get your money----but how many people actually are going to use this unit regularly to play cassettes, CDs AND records? I'd guess less than 1%. So, what it comes down to again is being realistic instead of angry and put-upon because you did not get $20,000 worth of audiophile equipment for $125.

The 5-star raters probably have low expectations, but they are much more realistic in their ratings if the unit functions in a half-way decent manner. The 1 and 2 star-raters are clearly types that expect something for nothing. Good luck with that.

Finally, me?

I bought the unit simply to play 78 rpm 10 inch records from the 1930s through 1950s. The turntable works great, the fidelity is certainly acceptable. The cassette player works (for the 10 cassettes I still have, and which I will hardly ever play) and again, the fidelity is acceptable. The CD player works fine, though for CDs, I would expect the sound quality to be better (except, OH! I only paid $100 for this unit and I would NEVER EXPECT excellent sound quality from it, so I play CDs on my better system). The radio is a radio. It sounds like a regular radio (as long as you have radio reception, which I doubt that the people who complain about the static have), so it is fine.

The unit is great looking, it works well beyond a $125 price tag. It is certainly one of the best units you can buy under $200 or $300.

Read Best Reviews of Crosley Musician Entertainment Center (Paprika) Here

I purchased this record player for the living room of my house. I read all of the Amazon.com reviews about four times of the span of a week. It was exciting to finally get my hands on this record player. A little back ground on me, I am a 32 year old male who is very into music. My eye sight is 20/20 and I'm pretty good at figuring things out. After actually "seeing" for myself...the display is "very" hard to read. It is easier to see in the daylight. I had difficulty the first night when my living room was only lit by a couple lamps. I found myself looking at it from a couple inches away at different directions in an attempt to make out what it said. The speakers are very weak. Don't expect a great deep sound to come from this unit. The sound is rather tingy without much bass. I will be attempting to attach some external speakers to beef up the sound. The record player seems pretty frail. I listened to an Aerosmith and a U2 album the first night. My particular record player spins with a slight wobble that you can hear in the music. At this point I am not bothered by it because it is such a nice treat to be able to listen to some of my old albums. I'm certain that after some time this will really start to annoy me. The radio works great. I mostly listen to talk radio and this unit sounds perfect for that format. I really can't write much about the cassette or CD player since I never use those features. I would recommend this record player to anyone that is looking for something that can do it all. In hindsight, I should have purchased a unit that put more into the record player. For this price, the amount spent on each feature is spread pretty thin. Also would like to reiterate that the record player can play one record. It is not a player that lets you cue up a few records at a time to play. Also, the needle arm is manual which means you put the needle on the record, and when the record is over you must take the needle off of the record and return it to the cradle. Might not seem like a big deal but it is if you're like me and might leave a record playing and then forget about it. The unit will stay on until you turn it off.

Want Crosley Musician Entertainment Center (Paprika) Discount?

I got this as a birthday present and I absolutely love it! It looks fantastic as a conversation piece and the sound quality of the music is lovely. The button labels are a little difficult to read at first, as they are raised bronze on bronze, however after using it just a couple times you remember where the buttons are and you won't need to look for them. It's easy to use and appears to be reasonably well made. I love attaching my ipod to it! I am definitely looking forward to enjoying it for years to come.

Save 47% Off

I actually purchased this record player at a local pawn shop ($65!) where it certainly looked new or at the very least extremely lightly used. I had been looking for a simple record player with internal speakers to sit atop a beautiful antique record stand that was waiting for us in our new rented apartment, and--despite the reservations I had about this one based on the negative Amazon reviews--I couldn't pass up the deal.

To state at the outset and in contrast to some of the reviewers below, I'm no audiophile: though I'm classically trained as a musician, if I need to hear an extremely high quality orchestral recording I'd rather listen to a CD system or with BOSE headphones. I'm also 24, so I'm not pining for some golden age of LPs and won't be upset if the sound from this machine doesn't perfectly conform to my childhood memories. I'm sure there are really excellent record players out there that would be blow this system's output out of the water (just as there are for CD players and any other type of electronic equipment), but I'm not interested in exceptional fidelity, nor--and this is my bone to pick with some reviewers below--could I reasonably expect it for $65.

Some preliminary observations:

1. Great appearance: it looks pretty old timey to me (though the CD deck obviously gives it away as a non-antique). To the criticism that it's shoddily constructed--I'm just not seeing it. The wood seems sturdy to me, even if it doesn't seem terribly aged or varnished. On top of the antique stand, it looks newer by comparison, but not cheaper.

2. Buttons: true that they're hard to read, but not impossible, and there are few enough of them that you'll figure out what they do quickly. It should be stated that nearly all the buttons have to do with the CD player function, so unless you're playing a lot CDs it's not a big deal.

3. Multiple functions: This is the machine's main selling point, in my opinion. Not only do the record player, CD player, and radio all sound great, they are also fairly easy to switch between. The radio is has both AM and FM, with a wire antenna out the back for reception (though this remains packaged up on my unit and the reception is already very good). The radio dial is similarly old time-y, so it can be a little tricky to find stations with weaker reception (a la the old days). The CD player sounds especially good, seeing as these speakers were likely developed for CD technology and placed in this unit because they fit the console. I haven't tried the tape deck (I don't have any cassettes anymore!), nor do I plan to, but I suppose it's good to have a deck in the house for a chance just in case. The aux input (1/8" to 1/8" included) works great with my iPhone (more below), and means that I can play absolutely anything on this system that I want.

4. Sound: Here's the thing: my records are old and haven't been played for a long time, so it's hard to know what to blame on the record player and what to blame on my LPs. The built-in stylus seems sturdy and straight-forward, and the three speeds are helpful for speeding through longer symphonic movements to get to the clarinet excerpts within. The sound is not BOSE quality, but it's also significantly better than clock radios and fills the large room with warm sound. The sound of the turntable is noticeably stuffier than on the CD or radio, but--to my limited knowledge--that was kind of the point of them inventing CDs in the first place, right? I don't hear much static, but I don't mind a little anyway because that's kind of the point of having an old time-y record player. The sound doesn't distort much when turned way loud, which means it could be heard over the din of a cocktail party, or during dinner conversation in the next room. The lid can close completely during playback with no noticeable change in sound quality, though the record does spin through a slit in the back of the system so you can't have it flush with a wall or other surface (though you wouldn't want to anyway since you couldn't prop open the lid in this instance). I've enjoyed it most when listening to the Beatles or S&G, and my jazz records sound FANTASTIC--definitely the ideal medium for music of that era. Is it the cleanest, most-balanced medium for listening to classical music? No, nor would I expect it to be. And, since I'm alive in 2012, I'm simply going to play those pieces on a CD system, not spend thousands on a record player, pre-amp, external speakers, etc. so I can earn the right to be condescending on an Amazon review. What I do know is that this system is going to spark my interest in jazz and 60s/70s folk, genres that weren't really doing it for me over the iPod, not to mention being a badass conversation piece in my living room.

5. Things I would change: so I suppose these are the things keeping this review from being 5 stars, but I mostly stay away from 5 stars as a rule anyway. On the record player and other than the sound/volume discrepancies with the other functions, I'd like the stylus to automatically return to the cradle when it reaches the end of a record (although and in contradiction to some reviews below, the record DOES stop spinning, just with the arm resting on the innermost ring). It's true that the CD buttons are hard to read, but what's possibly more irksome is that many of them are superfluous and dedicated to some kind of pre-program function that doesn't have much practical purpose it seems to me. Unlike my car system, when switching between functions the CD starts over at the beginning each time, so no flipping to NPR on the hour for news and returning to the same track on the CD player. As stated above, the radio dial has some trouble zeroing in on weaker signals, but this will be a phenomenon familiar to those of a certain age. As for the input aux (which is a HUGE plus and really rounds out the system nicely), there is no aux option on the front of the system, which means you have a to flip a switch in the back. This isn't a problem for me given the location of the system in my house, but if you want to keep it on a bookshelf or something and use the aux it could become a bit of a bother. As I say though, the trade off is worth it since I can stream anything over my iPhone and still benefit from this great-looking and sounding system. There is no quality adjustment on the system either--I would if I could trade out some of the byzantine programming buttons for some bass and treble knobs. No auto-off, if you're into saving every ounce of electricity. Also--and I feel silly for stating this because it should be obvious given the price and stated dimensions (though it evaded some other reviewers)--it only loads one record or CD as a time. All in all, none of these observations meets the criticism threshold--they're just things you should know if you're interested in this system.

Bottom line: if you need a way to play records, fill a room with a radio/CD/aux sound source, and look classy while doing it, this is the record player for you. If you're obsessed with sound quality and looking down your nose at lesser beings, I'm not sure what you're doing buying a record player for slightly over $100 on Amazon.