What is the fascination?
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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If you want to buy a new turntable, fine. I choose to use my superior intellect and arcane knowledge to identify a dusty old turntable from a grandfather's closet, cleverly re-engineer several parts, and install a vintage cart with a custom stylus cut to my specs (sorry, I can't share them). Through wit and industry I am quite wealthy, and can well afford to pay 2 - 3 times as much to refurbish a vintage table than to just buy a modern one that you plug in and it works. |
Can you say, "dripping with sarcasm"? kahlenz, You are more elitist than you know. Expense-wise, it’s just the other way around. A basically high quality vintage turntable (usually not to be found in any grandfather’s closet), if properly refurbished and usually re-plinthed, will get you more bang for the buck than a comparable new turntable. That’s the whole point. To achieve that end, you do have to be in a DIY frame of mind. If you farm out the work to any of several competent professionals, you will have to pay extra for their time and skillset. That’s the way this cookie crumbles. This IS a hobby, after all; "you pays your money and you takes yer choice". I’ve got about $800 in my refurbished Denon DP80 and less than $1000 in my Victor TT101. I’ve got a little over $1200 in my Lenco, including the cost of the Phoenix Engineering motor controller. These costs also include all electronic work done on them (mostly by me; some by professionals), all parts bought for them, and the creation of plinths of my own design for them out of slate or of other materials. Any of these 3 will compare favorably to commercially available turntables at over $5000. (At least that's my opinion, based on owning commercially available turntables for the previous 35 years or so, before I got into this aspect of the hobby about 7-8 years ago, and on lots of listening to other systems fed by turntables costing up to $25,000.) |
Again, I invite those of you who are in the "new makes most sense" camp to candidly chime in as to whether you HAVE or have NOT actually had the opportunity to sit down and listen to a vintage deck along the lines of a TD124 or Garrard 301. Let me make this confession-I used to belong to your "new makes more sense" camp. My brain and logic told me that modern manufacturers must have succeeded through the dark days of vinyl by dint of manufacturing ingenuity. I bought with my eyes. Starting more than ten years ago, the looks of the VPI Scout talked to me and said, "buy me". So after trying a few lesser new tables, I bought a VPI Classic thinking it would be the last turntable I would ever want. I was convinced by all the VPI fans, by the positive reviews, by the huge cast platter, by the fancy looking tonearm. Then I traded in the Classic for a Prime thinking it just had to be the last turntable I would ever want since it had the same tonearm that Fremer had raved about in his review of VPI's $30,000 direct drive deck. You can judge with your eyes and logic, but you can't judge accurately with your eyes and logic. You have to listen. You also have to surrender your penchant for outward appearance. A deck that seems ugly but that sounds fantastic will begin to look beautiful to you. A deck that your eyes initially said was a beauty will fade to drabness if you don't like the way it sounds. Let me borrow from Lewm6 and the old phrase, "you pays your money and you takes your choice". |
