Stanton 800-B (c. 1964)

Ninety-nine dollars bought a whole record-playing system in 1964 - platter, Unipoise arm, and walnut base - and the magazines of the day took it seriously enough to put it on the page.

Overview

First, a warning for anyone chasing this one down: the record on the Stanton 800-B is thin, and it is internally inconsistent. One source file carries the title "Stanton 800-B Cartridge" while the body text describes a "Stereotable" - a turntable. The weight of the evidence, such as it is, points to the turntable. High Fidelity (October 1964, p.106) reviewed the 800-B as a "Stereotable System," and Audio (August 1964, p.47) listed it in its turntable coverage. Treat any listing that calls it a cartridge with suspicion until someone produces a box or a manual that says otherwise.

What the 800-B was, per the period press, is a single-speed turntable running at 33⅓ rpm, sold as a system with a Model 200 tonearm and a walnut base. High Fidelity put the package at $99. That number is the interesting part. In the mid-sixties, ninety-nine dollars was a real commitment but not a fortune, and Stanton was selling a complete, integrated record-playing front end rather than a bare platter you had to finish yourself. The magazine's review treated it as a system — arm, table, and base together — which is how most buyers in 1964 would have encountered it anyway.

The footprint is modest. High Fidelity gave dimensions of roughly 15-13/16 by 12-7/8 inches, standing about 6-1/2 inches high depending on how the leveling feet were adjusted. Adjustable feet mean the table expected to sit on something less than perfectly level.

Beyond that, the record goes quiet. No wow-and-flutter figures, no rumble numbers, no tracking-error measurements, no weight, no platter specification, no motor details, and no production start or end dates have surfaced. The page heading dates it "c. 1964," which is consistent with the two 1964 magazine appearances, but that is as precise as it gets. Anyone who claims to know the production run is guessing.

Key Features

The Model 200 "Unipoise" Tonearm

The arm is the most thoroughly described part of the system, and it is where Stanton put its engineering story. High Fidelity (October 1964, p.106) described it as a precision-crafted hollow metal arm suspended on a single ball pivot - the single pivot being the reason for the "Unipoise" name. A hollow tube keeps mass down at the business end, and a single ball pivot is a deliberately simple bearing.

Tracking force was set with a calibrated scale and a sliding weight. That is a counterweight-on-a-graduated-arm arrangement rather than a dial or a spring, and it has the virtue of being adjustable in fine increments and readable at a glance. The review noted that when correctly installed the arm is truly balanced — a reminder that "correctly installed" was doing real work in 1964 and still does. A Unipoise arm that has been knocked about or set up on a table that isn't level will not behave the way the review described.

Gyropoise Suspension

Audio (August 1964, p.47) is the source for the "Gyropoise action" - a magnetic suspension in which the arm suspension and the platter suspension are unified, with the motor rigidly mounted. That is an unusual combination. The platter floats on a magnetic suspension, the arm floats with it, and the motor does not float at all. The arm and the record surface move together as one unit, so whatever the suspension does, it does to both at once, while the motor's vibration is kept out of the floating assembly by being bolted down separately.

No independent lab measurements of the 800-B's isolation or its speed stability have turned up. The Gyropoise idea is documented. Its measured performance is not.

Single-Speed 33⅓ RPM Operation

The 800-B runs at one speed: 33⅓ rpm. No 45, no 78, no speed selector to go wrong. For a buyer in 1964 whose listening was LPs, that meant fewer parts, fewer adjustments, and nothing to knock out of calibration. For anyone hoping to play a 45 or a stack of 78s, it is a hard stop. The record does not say whether Stanton offered a multi-speed sibling, and nothing in the surviving material names one.

Walnut Base and Leveling Feet

The system shipped with a walnut base, and the height figure of about 6-1/2 inches is explicitly tied to the adjustment of the leveling feet. A wood base was the standard way to dress a turntable for the living room in this period, and it also gave the suspension something solid to work against. The fact sheet does not record the plinth's construction beyond the wood, so anything said about mass or damping would be invention.

What the Record Doesn't Say

The gaps are worth stating bluntly, because the 800-B attracts confident claims. There are no wow-and-flutter figures, no rumble figures, and no tracking-error figures in the surviving documentation. There is no weight. There is no cartridge information - the 800-B was sold with an arm, not, as far as the record shows, with a cartridge. There is no platter material or dimension, no motor specification, and no service or maintenance information. A fuller specification sheet does not appear to have survived in the usual directories.

Reception beyond the two 1964 mentions is also absent. High Fidelity reviewed it and Audio listed it, and neither set of numbers beyond price and dimensions made it into the archive. Nobody has turned up a long-term follow-up, a comparison test, or an owner's account of how the Gyropoise held up after a decade of use. For a table built around a magnetic suspension, that last absence is the one that stings.

Buying One Today

There is no reliable current market pricing for the Stanton 800-B in the archive's records, and the eBay results for the search term are polluted. The listings that surface are mostly unrelated power adapters and other gear that happens to share the "800-B" string. Anyone shopping should search by the full Stanton name and check photographs carefully, because a listing titled "Stanton 800-B Cartridge" may be exactly the identity confusion described above, and a listing titled "800-B" may not be a Stanton at all.

Condition questions specific to this table are hard to answer without documentation. The Unipoise arm's single ball pivot is the part to inspect closely, along with the calibrated scale and sliding weight, since a missing counterweight is not something a buyer can casually replace. The leveling feet and the walnut base are the other obvious wear points. Beyond that, the archive has no information on common failures or parts availability.

What the 800-B offers a collector is a documented slice of 1964 design: a magnetic suspension that unified arm and platter, a single-pivot arm with a calibrated sliding weight, and a complete system price of $99.

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