THE GOLDEN AGE OF TURNTABLES!

Tulipmania in these days are wiring prices. It's a golden age for cableman.

A lot of technologies in cartridges are lost especially in MM and MI. The only bright side is return of Technics.

Those ’Golden and Dark Ages’ in analog were not synchronous either.

The Golden Age of analog recording probably ended in the late ’60’s, with the introduction of solid state and multitracking. Many of the great audiophile labels (Decca, RCA, Mercury, EMI, Blue Note, etc.) already lost their way in the ’70s, years before digital arrived.

The Golden Age of analog record players - Turntables - ended in the early ’80s on a real high, with the various statement tables like technics SP-10mk3, Pioneer Exclusive P3, Kenwood L-07D, Denon DP-100, Sony PS-X9, Micro SX-8000mk2, Thorens Reference, etc. This came to an abrupt end with the arrival of the CD.

Of course the later ’80s and ’90s were the Dark Age of ’perfect sound forever’, but the vinyl Renaissance that started early this century is developping into another Golden Age. The market is getting bigger, there’s more competition, more R&D, etc.

All that is great, but what’s new? To many ’experts’, the current King of Turntables is the TechDas AirForce Zero. This is a Micro SX-8000mk2 ’in extremis’, to the tune of $150k. It is even developped by the same designer, who must be of a venerable age by now.

So while I haven’t seen much real innovation in turntable, tonearm and cartridge design, this certainly is a Golden Age of the Phono Amplifier, both tube and solid state. As much as I enjoy the ’old stuff’ for turntables, tonearms and cartridges, you do need a top level modern phono amplifier to bring out their best.

Hi,
why do i have the feeling that the inspired and top notch tt’s of yesterday if manafactured with todays standards and materials would most likely outperform (in musicality at least) the majority of current silly designs? Everything is not information retrieval, if cannot play the song. All of the above mentioned by @edgewear plus a few more will sure do. Even that scottish suspended one with airpax motor and that english one from the 50’s stand the test of time, especially the latter is again in production, at a cost. Only thing that changed is media revealing what we were not aware of at the time.

@petg60, 

"Only thing that changed is media revealing what we were not aware of at the time"

If by this you mean audiophile reissues, even that ain't the truth. The best original vinyl pressings from the Golden Age will sound better than those reissues. Really? Really.

Hi,
probably misstyped, press is the right word. Original pressings do sound better, no argue here.