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What's all the fuss about late 70s and earl 80s run of the mill midfi turntables?

My first table was a Garrard SL95-B. It was really nothing to sing about and you had to pay extra for the plastic base. I graduated from that to a Philips GA 212. Thank God it was located on a concrete slab floor. Still nothing special. Then on to a Sony 2251 LA with an SME 2009 tonearm. This was a real upgrade with an Ortofon MC20 cartridge and transformer. I thought I was doing that thing in tall cotton. Then I met Russ Goddard at The Audible Difference in Palo Alto. He told me to bring my setup to his store and we would do a little A-B comparison. After listening for only a minute or two it was obvious My Sony was not any way near a Linn LP 12 of that time. Anyway the point is most of the common tables from people like Garrard, Dual, Marantz, were just imposters to the real thing. I hold no nostalgic emotion to those tables. I was foolish enough to sell my Linn setup when the writing was on the wall around 1999 regarding vinyl. Big mistake!! I sold all my vinyl, my table with an Ittock arm arm and audio technica OC-9 shibata. A SOTA MC Head Amp designed by John Curl (a collectors item today) for $1000.00. Lock me up. I had every cartridge of the day, Koetsu, Supex, GAS, Fidelity Research. My 2 year old son tore the stylus off my Sleeping Beauty Shibata accindently.

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clearthinker's avatar
clearthinker
1,582 posts
 

@ghdprentice    Yes, nostalgia for sure.  I liked my Garrard but swapped it back in the early 70s.

There is a notable number of audiophiles said to have good ears who still use 'upgraded' Garrard 301s and 401s and various Thorens.  Art Dudley was a big case in point.  Many of them allege these old tables are better than modern tables and recent heavyweight $000,000 monsters.  I am a fan of good engineering and certainly not of 200lb+ overkill (not even if gold plated).

But Is there something wrong with their ears?  If so, surely we should be told?

richopp
760 posts
 

I had to laugh at the poster who had the BIC turntable...we used to sell them at my shop, along with the bouncy Thorns and Linn-Sondek.  I kind of liked the SP-10, and we sold some of those as well.

Big issues with tone arms back then.  The Shure 3009 was over 100.00, so not as popular as the ones that came on the tables.  In those days, arms and moving coil cartridges were fairly new, but certainly were better than the standard tables.

The B&O straight arm tables were good, but with only the MMC cartridges, it was a failure for the best systems.  RABCO tried the straight arm design, which was said to be the "ideal" way to track vinyl.  Evidently no one has figured out how to do that yet...

Anyway, we also had on display a Transcriptor table.  It was beautiful, but didn't really work.  Can't remember what happened to it...

Cheers!

jwei
154 posts
 

The old Duals were well-made for the time.  I enjoyed many hours listening to my 1019 with Shure V-15 III.  Still have it in storage.

ghdprentice
7,022 posts
 

Wow, I had a Philips 212… what a terrible sounding turn table. Also, some Thorens and cheap Garrard. I also had an AR circa 1980… with the Sure V15 (?). Wow, also terrible in comparison to any reasonable priced table and arm from the late 90’s to now. While I understand nostalgia, I really understand sound quality… and none of the old stuff had it… maybe high end Garrard.

audio-oldie
10 posts
 

I am a "cold war" era G.I. that went to Europe and bought a Thorens TD126III and a SME 3009 tonearm.  I still own it. While in Europe I bought A Stanton 881S and a Micro acoustics 530MP.  This was magnificent to my ears.  I later bought a Shure V15VxMr and it STILL sounds magnificent.  I own a system that is shifting more to digital and the heart is a multi-function DAC, but I still own close to 1200 albums. Analog will always have a physical aura to how it represents reproduction; but the whole audio spectrum will shift.

 

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