How many turntables have you owned?

It REALLY makes you think, when you realize that your first TT was maybe a Mattel. Maybe I was 6 years old. It was red, my favorite color.

There have been Many since then, but none of them since then were used to sling little green army men of the platter when turned on.

Oracle Delphi

Garrard 301 (never played it)

Rek-O-Kut L-34 (never played it)

Only two:

One when I was kid. Then…

1984 SOTA Saphire
Plus 2 arms, and 4 arm boards. Rebuild kit and RoadRunner controller.

But I have been looking at some other tables recently. (Older Micro Seiki, Luxman, and Denon tables.)

My first was a portable wind-up 78 player, with steel needles, or dried hawthorn needles for a softer sound. Given to me by a grandmother, probably to the disgust of my parents who had to listen! In those days we had a massively heavy teak Garrard radiogram. My mother had me chop it into firewood and I knew no better than to comply. It was chopped up as my brother had bought a Philips mono autochanger with a ceramic pickup. Next table was my wife-to-be's Sony, replaced with a Garrard SP25 MkIV. Left that behind in the UK, and bought a piece of Radio Shack crap on arrival in Canada. Then got seduced by CDs and didn't come back until I got a RP3/Shure V15 about 2006. Stepped up to an SME 10/Series V in 2011, and acquired a second SME 10 this year. No intention whatsoever of buying any more tables!

dogberry,

   Yes! I forgot about the steel needle on my first TT. My father talked about cactus needles being used at one time, I had no experience with that. Indeed, there was to be a long succession of TT's in my future, but that wasn't so uncommon in the 60's now was it?