Inexpensive Good Vintage Turntables?

Yep.  Vintage turntables are often better than today's over-designed, over-weight blingy monsters employing all the wrong materials like wood and carbonfibre just to be vogue.

Whatever happened to honest engineering?  I would far sooner have that than fashion.

Technics make A great Simple Turntable

The SL-D2 is a good one 

@clearthinker There are Technologies that have progressed and are in use today, due to their usage being proven to be fit for purpose. That have been cutting edge in providing non metal solutions for the methods employed to produce a mechanical device in all sectors of industry.

Aviation and Performance Vehicles are using Wood Products produced using very accurate and reliable methods for their construction, these wood products can be machined to have the tightest of tolerances, no different to a metal and will remain stable to perform as per their designed for function in all environments met.

The same Industries as above, are also using Composites and Thermoplastics, of which the merits for their usage is very well versed and adopted by numerous industries, each are known for their capability to be used in place of a metal.

The use of such materials are much more planet friendly as their production is not as energy absorbing as metals and the methods used to form shapes from the non metal materials, is requiring much less energy when moulding or machining.

Used as a Material Globally, the improvement in the environmental impact on the Planet, when selecting non metal materials is encouraged that is a good thing for all.

There are alternatives to the above, and methods can be adopted that will be the better for all.

All the above does not offer the same energy preservation as choosing to buy a already produced TT from a Vintage era, over a modern design.

Any methods where a obsolete Design/Model is given a resurrection and a second life gets my vote over any other methods used to acquire a device. 

If the chosen model is seen to be a little needy in some areas, and the wish is to get the device back up to a Top Level of performance, then why not see if a Modern Method for using materials will be fitting for ones needs.

I am slowly going through the process of swapping out worn sacrificial Bearing Housing Parts for ones produced from Thermoplastics and other non metal materials.  

@pindac 

"Aviation and Performance Vehicles are using Wood Products produced using very accurate and reliable methods for their construction, these wood products can be machined to have the tightest of tolerances, no different to a metal and will remain stable to perform as per their designed for function in all environments met."

All woods move over time, however intensively or carefully they are prepared.  This makes wood unsuitable for critical engineering applications where minimum tolerances are critical.  To utilise it in turntables is just fashion bling, not good engineering design.

If you want to fly in a wooden plane that is your privilege but I doubt you will find one - they went out 100 years ago, in the 1920s, save for the Mosquito fighter/bomber plane that the UK created in WW2 because of shortage of metals.  My mother's first husband died in one..  Neither do I know of any wooden performance vehicles, unless you count the Morgan car, a design also perfected nearly 100 years ago.

"The use of such materials are much more planet friendly as their production is not as energy absorbing as metals..."

You must be a scientist as, like most of the others, you have not evaluated the causes of environmental damage correctly.  By far the most costly elements of product production and use are the creation and disposal of the product.  So to retain an already extant product in use for a longer period and not replace it with a new one, however environmentally friendly its producer claims it to be, will always trump the production of a new item.  When will scientists understand this very simple fact?  Your post does belatedly acknowledge this principle in your para 8, which  partially contradicts your para 4.

An example of this that really irks me is the battery car.  The battery lasts for 8 years, maybe 10, and when it fails to hold its charge the car is scrapped (along with the battery) because producers have elected to integrate the battery in the structure of the car, rather than make it removeable/replaceable as I advocated nearly 10 years ago.  In the result twice as many cars have to be constructed and scrapped compared with the ICE car that typically remains in use for more than 20 years.  Duurrrrrr.

Great thread! I have several vintage tables, both belt-drive and DD variety. Three Thorens (TD-160, 160 Super, TD-320), a JVC QL-5, and a Denon DP-72L. My 'modern' table is a Music Hall MMF-5SE with Goldring 1042 purchased in the early 2000s. I just made a minor upgrade on the interconnects to the MMF-5 that paid off big time. CD players have improved (along with DACs) over the years, but they still can't match vinyl for sound that just seems 'right', for lack of a better, more nuanced term. But I am not a Luddite....I own and use 8 or 9 CD players