Sony PS-5520 (1972–1973)
A belt-drive automatic that Sony pitched at the "lazy perfectionist" — and priced at $159.50 with the arm, base, and dust cover included.
Overview
There's a particular kind of record collector who refuses to stack wax but also refuses to leap up every twenty minutes to lift a stylus out of the run-out groove. Sony built the PS-5520 specifically for that person, and the company's own advertising said so outright — the copy that ran across the audio press in 1972 and 1973 addressed itself to the "lazy perfectionist," a buyer who wanted automatic operation without the changer stigma. High Fidelity (March 1972, p.103) and DB-Magazine (November 1972, p.7) both carried the same pitch, which framed the machine as the answer for anyone who winced at dropping records onto one another but resented dashing across the room at twenty-minute intervals.
What separates the PS-5520 from the low-end automatic crowd is the drive. Sony used a hysteresis motor spinning a 12-inch non-magnetic platter by belt, and the published performance figures were respectable for the money: wow and flutter held below 0.1%, rumble down 42 dB. Those are honest mid-fi numbers rather than audiophile ones — nobody is going to mistake this for a direct-drive transcription deck — but for a $159.50 complete system they represent real engineering discipline. The belt-drive topology also keeps the motor noise away from the platter, which is the whole point of the hysteresis approach at this price.
The tonearm is a 12-inch balanced design, and Sony equipped it properly: anti-skating is provided and calibrated, tracking force is selectable from a maximum of three grams down to a fraction of a gram, and a cueing lift is fitted for manual operation. That three-gram ceiling tells you what era this is — it will happily accept the heavier cartridges of the early '70s, and the sub-gram floor means it can be dialed in gently for lighter tracking. The automatic action, per Sony's own copy, was engineered to be gentle: the arm settles into the lead-in groove precisely, with the stylus centered by the anti-skating, and the descent is damped so the auto-drop is easier on the record than a nervous hand.
The complete package — turntable, arm, walnut base, and hinged dust cover, sold less cartridge — listed at $159.50 suggested retail. That price is the story here. Sony positioned the PS-5520 beneath its more ambitious PS-2251 direct-drive deck (which ran $349.50 in the same period), so the PS-5520 was the accessible entry into Sony's component turntable line for buyers who wanted automation and a finished wood base without paying direct-drive money. Owners report that the walnut base and hinged cover were included rather than optional, which mattered at a time when many competitors nickel-and-dimed on plinths and dust covers.
Where the PS-5520 shows its age is in the usual places for belt-drive automatics of this vintage. The belt is a wear item and will need replacement on any surviving example — a perished or stretched belt shows up immediately as speed instability. The automatic mechanism, with its trip linkage and arm-lift cam, is the other maintenance point; these systems are reliable when clean and lubricated but sticky when neglected, and a gummed-up auto-return is the most common complaint among collectors who acquire one today. The hysteresis motor itself is generally regarded as rugged and long-lived, which is why so many of these decks are still running.
Collectibility is modest but real. The PS-5520 doesn't command the prices of Sony's direct-drive studio and audiophile decks, and it isn't the object of the same fetishism as the PS-2251. What it offers instead is an honest, well-built, fully equipped automatic for the collector who wants a period-correct second table or a daily driver that won't punish a valuable record. Buyers should expect to budget for a belt and a cleaning-and-lubrication of the auto mechanism, and should check that the cueing lift still damps properly — a dropping cue is the surest sign the damping fluid has gone.
The PS-5520 is also a useful document of how Sony sold hi-fi in the early '70s: confident, technically specific advertising that named the motor type, quoted wow/flutter and rumble figures, and pitched the machine at a recognizable human personality rather than at a spec sheet. That the ad copy ran essentially unchanged across High Fidelity, DB-Magazine, and HiFi-Stereo through 1972 and into mid-1973 says something about how well Sony thought the message landed — and, for the collector today, it's a reminder that the PS-5520 was never meant to be a flagship. It was meant to be the turntable a careful listener could actually afford, and on those terms it still holds up.
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