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What is the fascination?

I have to ask what is the fascination with these older turntables?  I recently listened to an older SP 10 MKII with a Jelco and Older SME arm with Koetsu and Stanton cartridges.  The sound was very good I will admit but I cannot say it was better than the 1200G or even a 1200GR for that matter.  Heck even the Rega RP 8 is really an amazing sounding turntable for the money and they are brand new.   These tables are coming up on 40 plus years old.  One forum contributor said a turntable should not have any sound at all.  I agree and the newer tables get closer to that "no sound" than many of these colored (smooth,  warm) sounding turntables   I recently purchased a Pickering ESV 3000 MM cartridge that arrived in the mail yesterday and I had to ask myself, "what am I doing?"  So with that being said, why the fascination?  If one want to change the sound of the table, start with the cartridge, they all do sound different.  Nowadays the tables and arms are so good and engineered based on the earlier designs and bettered.  Also, when you buy say an older used arm, how do you know its been cared for?  Arms bearings can be screwed up pretty bad when one tries to tighten cartridges with the headshell attached to the tonearm or the tonearm mounted on the table and many people do not even know they are destroying their arms bearings so I mean you really have to know who you are getting the arm from and check the bearings etc.  There is a lot of risk with turntables, much more than with any components because of so many moving parts that do get old and break.  Why the fascination? 
tzh21y
fsonicsmith's avatar
fsonicsmith
959 posts
 
https://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=133143&start=1750

Scroll down to post 1770-should you happen to be interested-as to my thoughts on vintage idlers vs. modern belt drive. 
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,834 posts
 
No, it was never the best. But when it first came out in the '60s, it was a whole lot better than much of the competition.
?? The Empire was better, the Lenco was better, Thorens, the Garrard 301, Dual, Miracord, even some of the higher end BSRs... The AR was terrible. We hated seeing them come in the shop. The trick to making them work was a bit of talcum powder on the belt, since the motor was so underpowered. The plastic headshell often had fit problems going into the arm tube- the plastic was often deformed. The suspension couldn't manage a proper platter pad, so it had a foam pad that was loaded with static electricity. The platter and bearing were its main strength and it had good looks, which is what sold it.
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,816 posts
 
The original AR arm was pretty bad. In the 80's people started cutting it off the subchassis and putting on a different arm. George Merrill came up with some great mods for the table, employing some methods he uses to this day on his own table.
artemus_5's avatar
artemus_5
1,962 posts
 

Cleeds. Here is the  thread about building great turntable at a low cost.
Notice that this is the second thread about building cheap TT. The first had already gone viral.
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/building-high-end-tables-cheap-at-home-despot-ii
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