vintage turntables?

The high end vintage Japanese turntables were statement products which came from huge companies with vertical integration and economy of scale that today's turntable manufacturers can't even dream about. There was a huge R&D budget subsidized by the sale of tens of thousands of mass market siblings. I have a Technics SP-10 with the EPA-100 tonearm. If that were developed, manufactured and marketed by a current company, you could expect a price well over $20K.

Use simple logic and disregard reviewers. Your dollar will go much further.

I contacted Kevin (KAB) last year to ask about his mods and their potential. He told me to keep the SP-10 because the best he can achieve with the 1200 series won't quite reach that level. Bigger, better motor, etc.

I already had the SP-10 so the debate does not apply to me but I can see where the KAB mods might be a better deal considering you can get one with zero miles on it whereas, if you found an SP-10 brand new, it would cost a fortune and a half.
Also, you can move up incrementally with KAB instead of having to plunk it all down at once on an SP-10. In my experience it is more fun to get your improvements in small doses.
Bottom line, in my opinion, is that you can get way more bang for your bucks with a high end, vintage, Japanese direct drive than any modern table can deliver.

Check out yard sales. You may very well get lucky and buy a very serious DD table for $15. If it is heavy, holds speed, and appears to be complete, buy it.

Gaslover - This thread seems to be about scoring bargains on vintage tables and I would say that $80 for a Phillips GA 312 certainly qualifies as a steal as long as the cosmetics and performance are still good. It compares more closely to Bang and Olufsen than to these heavyweight direct drive numbers we are talking about. By comparison it is lightweight, ringy and springy and won't approach their speed stability.

I'm not sure there is any established standard for what a turntable should look like.

I agree with Pryso completely about the way things came down in the turntable market. Reviewers played a pretty big part in boosting VPI, SOTA, Linn and Oracle in those days at the expense of superior Japanese tables.

And ironically enough, the Technics SP-10 was originally designed for DJ work and, because it was so good and so user friendly, was revised as the SP-10 MK II and sold to audiophiles. Later, the 12xx series are made for audiophiles and, because they are so good, were picked up by DJs. Full circle.

James1969- The economy of scale is gone and so is the mass market subsidy. Those companies would elect to use exotic materials and they would machine to preposterous precision. If they did it. Which they won't. Ever.

The market is too small for a giant like that to be bothered. That's why the companies making most turntables today are able to stay in business. They are able to fly under the corporate radar because this market segment is just too fringey for the big guys to bother with.

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.

Lew - My memory is not to be trusted absolutely but I remember some things pretty well. I recall the EPA-100 and The Arm as being the TAS darlings of the day. It's quite possible that the SP-10 was as well. However, in those days the Goldmund tables reigned supreme and a variety of belts got the reviewers in a lather. Oracle, VPI, SOTA and Linn were the headliners as I recall.