Back In the Day

I think that this phenomenon of churning equipment goes hand-hand with the internet taking off i.e. the public has ready & easy access to a used & new equipment market that it did not have in 1980s. Plus, the number of manuf in each segment (amps, preamps, cables, TTs, etc) has grown many-fold & customers want to try out more/diff gear all the time.....
In the 1980s the methodology to buy equipment was much diff - it was a face-face transaction. Not so now!

Now, you buy from some user name, if you like it you keep it otherwise put it back up for sale....

It was all about "gittin" new music. Every time I went to the record store, I ran into somebody I knew. We were all well acquainted with the owner who gave good recommendations.

After we got into the "high end", the music thing was all over. Although that was a productive phase, I'm glad that I'm through it, and will never go back to it again. "It" meaning "listening to the equipment".

Back then, as some have pointed out already, there were far fewer manufacturers of high end equipment than now... but far more critical a limitation back then --- and the main reason why constant upgrades were rare for audiophiles (even if they had the money to do so) ... was limited access to what was available. Unless you lived in a big city with access to multiple High End shops, you simply had no access to what was available. Now, with the internet and places like audiogon, we have instant access to hundreds of brands of high end equipment. Back then, you would, if you were at all rural, drive a few hundred miles to find a shop, see what they have and choose from that limited array of equipment.

So... when all you had were some few and far between High End shops, you chose from what you had access to... and that was limited. So people did not volunteer to re-enter the hunt-and-find process nearly as often as now --- when one merely has to click a few buttons from home and choose from 25-times as many options and simply wait for the equipment to show up on your door-step.

ithink there was available some excellent brands--mcintosh, marantz, hadley, quad, klh, to name a few, and people were satisfied with the sound of their turntable-based systems.

current-production gear reveals flaws and may engender dissatisfaction--hence replacing components.

For many "listeners" the gear has become the main attraction, and the music secondary. When I was first getting into the hobby the gear was a means to an end. With the exception of the occasional "Stereo Spectacular" (or something like that) LP release, how many "Audiophile" recordings where there back in the day? Not many, to the best of my recollection. Certainly not nearly as many as became available around the same time that there was the explosion in the number of gear manufacturers . I remember when owning that rare recording on HP's "Super List" had as much cachet (or more) as having the latest offering from Koetsu. Remember the articles in TAS about the great concert halls of the world, the great pipe organs of the world, etc.? Remember how many more pages of every issue was devoted to record reviews than is now? When was the last time you attended a gathering of audiophiles and someone made an intelligent comment about why Carlos Kleiber was a great conductor? Man, do I feel old; and I'm only (?) 54.