vintage turntables?

Musicgioni, I agree with Atmasphere. You compare the Cosmos to some middle of the road vintage direct-drive turntables and then make a sweeping generalization about all vintage turntables. Likewise, you compare vintage receivers to your very high quality modern system that consists of separates, and again you make a sweeping generalization in favor of the latter. My point is that there are MANY vintage turntables that, like your Cosmos, also blow away the vintage turntables you listened to. (Try a re-plinthed Lenco or Garrard or a restored SP10 Mk2 or Mk3, or a restored Exclusive P3 or Kenwood L07D or many top end models of Denon, Sony, Yamaha, etc., in proper plinths). As regards the electronics, etc, the art of solid state audio design is always a slave to the available technology of the individual parts. So, because these days we have faster, better, transistors than ever before, better caps and resistors, too, it is not surprising that today's solid state products are likely to be superior. I say "likely" because in many cases the build quality of the older stuff will mitigate the negative effects of out-dated parts. As for tube gear, your generalization just does not hold up.

The other thing you don't mention is the condition of the products you auditioned. Anything more than 20 years old probably needs to have all its electrolytic caps replaced, for example. Old direct-drive tt's need to have that done, especially. In many cases, outdated transistors in some of this gear can be replaced with modern and functionally superior equivalents, which makes a huge difference in performance.

Weseixas, I suppose that depends on who to talk to. I had an SL1100, the very first direct-drive machine, and when the SP-10 came out, I wanted one a lot but could not afford it.

Maybe three years later (1982??) a friend of mine bought an SP-10 and it was immediately apparent that this was a great machine, and as I recall by that time it was widely viewed as one of the top tables at that time, although it did not have as much cache because it was not American-made.

The top Japanese table of that era IMO was Micro Seiki, i was not aware of the SP-10 being highly rated. Not unusual for the time i guess, before internet a lot was determined by the mags and localized knowledge..

Word up did not fly around as it does today..... :)

Regards,

The war of words between Michael of SOTA and Ivor of Linn dominated the turntable scene in the press in the early 80s and there was a general belief that Japanese product of that period was just dressed up mid-fi. In fact, the SP-10 MK II was packaged with the obsidian plinth and dustcover and an EPA-100 tonearm and marketed as the SL-1000 MK II simply because so many audiophiles were buying them for home use.

I'm not so sure. Harry Pearson went ape over either the original SP10 or the SP10 Mk 2 (I think it was the original version), and that gave the product a whole lot of cache in the US. You might say that it was the first Japanese product to be so lionized, but there may have been others. The Micro Seiki products, on the other hand, were relatively unknown to me, living on the East coast US, and I was just as much of an audio nut then (in the 1970s) as now.