Direct Drive turntables

Phil, I agree that the inflation calculator does not answer the question. The channel inefficiency part is key. Another point was that in 1978, the USD/JPY rate was much higher than it was today (the dollar was at twice as strong vs the yen, and for a decent part of the year was 2.5x stronger). Indeed the USD was much stronger against a host of currencies. Most of such a table would be manufactured outside the US I imagine and would therefore have those local manfacturing/profit margins built into non-USD currencies before being brought here to have another multiple (or two) taken on the sale.

Owned both tables and sold them. The Denon 47 F was nosey a lot of record surface noise. Upgraded to the Aries 1 that I enjoyed for many years. But after purchasing a TTW Audio TT I realized the Aries was colored and soft sounding.

Cjaronica, This is not to dispute your logic in ending up with a TTW turntable, but a turntable per se is not going to exaggerate "record surface noise". That phenomenon is typically due to the phono stage, the cartridge/tonearm combination, cartridge set-up, or a combination of all these elements.