Reason for buying old/classic turntables

I will frankly admit that I have become smitten with vintage tts only in the last year after acquiring a Lenco in a "giant direct-coupled" plinth. The Lenco was immediately perceived to sound better than my Notts Analog Hyperspace, so the Notts had to go. I then started to read the threads and the websites devoted to Garrard, Lenco, Technics, etc, with much more enthusiasm, thinking that if the Lenco is so excellent, what else am I missing? Vintage tts are a natural link to my lifelong hobby of collecting and restoring post WWII sports cars, mostly Porsches. Except in this case, I am wondering whether there is a real performance super bargain to be found out there. (An old Porsche will not ever be state of the art in perfomance per se.) Plus, the vintage tts are relatively cheap and are at the very least stable in value. So what do you have to lose? Now I've got a second Lenco, a Garrard 301, two Technics SP10s (a MkII and a IIA), and a Denon DP80. Once I decide on how to plinth each of these babies, I'm going to compare each one to my functional Lenco and decide for myself which one I like best. I'll probably discard the tts that fall short, but I expect to keep at least two up and running. If I could find an SP10 MkIII or a Pioneer P3 or P3a for reasonable prices, I would buy those too.

Sheesh Lew, the only thing you're missing is an Empire...

IMO/IME, none of the vintage turntables bring home the music like a new table does, unless they are updated/modified/tweaked/whatever. But then they do quite well.

I hope everyone is having a good set of holidays!

The analogy with vintage automobiles is restricted to cosmetics only. Contemporary cars are much more evolved than the old ones, or aren't they? Contemporary turntables are not better per se than the vintage ones. Of course classic cars are very very nice (more elegant cosmetics than the modern ones). I think my Mercedes-Benz 500E looks better than the W210 series (with the ridiculous oval headlights).

Chris

Some of the 60's/early 70's era cars are among the fastest automobiles ever built.

They oversteered, didn't handle worth a sh**, cornered terribly, and often needed repair.

But using massive amounts of torque, horsepower, and gasoline they went straight ahead very quickly.

From a technical perspective, they are dinosaurs.

My 1969 muscle car gets 6mpg (on a good day).

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there are a lot of audio companies that are putting more effort into building a good turntable than the Big Three put into building a good car. Have you driven a Dodge Stratus lately? Yeesh!

Sota in the hi-fi. Honda in the garage.