Commcat, with all due respect, I think your position is a bit extreme, as well as being oversimplified by not differentiating between the different types of components (along the lines of what I did in my previous post in this thread).
During the 1990's, I went through a period of several years during which I bought a lot of revered 1950's and 1960's gear, used it extensively, and eventually sold most of it. My listening was to mostly high quality, simply mic'd, audiophile-oriented classical recordings, both modern ones and audiophile-calibre reissues of highly regarded older recordings.
The turntables and cartridges of that period were a joke compared to what came later. I have had, among other speakers, a pair of very large Tannoy's, the drivers from which sell today for several thousand $. A typical discerning Audiogoner would reject them in minutes, compared to good modern speakers, due to general lack of definition.
Amplifiers and preamplifiers of that period, as I indicated in my previous post, arguably are competitive with high-end designs of today, although I think that the better parts quality that is available to designers today (other than tubes) would result in their losing the competition most of the time.
I've owned good examples of the most highly revered vintage Marantz stuff (Model 1's, 2's, 7, 9's, two 10B's), as well as a lot of McIntosh, Scott, Fisher, Brook, and other highly regarded 1950's and 1960's electronics. The only piece I ended up keeping in my main system is my REL Precedent tuner, together with a Scott multiplex adapter.
Recordings themselves, which you and Shadorne have been discussing, are a another story altogether, which I won't get into here. Suffice it to say that I have no problem finding sonically enjoyable classical material from any of the decades from the 1940's to the present one.
Regards,
-- Al
