Reason for buying old/classic turntables

Mrjstark, We are in the same boat. One reason that I am tinkering with these old tts, idler and dd types, not belt-drives, is that I have heard all the best belt-drives that cost less than $5,000 and already know that my Lenco in giant plinth can equal or beat them in all respects, IMO and in my system, of course. Since I am unwilling to invest more than $5K in a modern belt-drive, the logical course is to continue to explore the limits of the old tts. This is an added factor, in addition to my innate affinity for old stuff, that drives me. However, I take with a grain of salt any single report of one tt sounding better than another, unless I've heard it myself. (This is in reference to the notion that a Garrard smoked a Brinkmann, etc.)

In several replies posted here in this thread I have a strong feeling that many of us are merely driven by emotion and nostalgia towards the ownership of a vintage turntable, not because of the believe that these vintage tt's are better than the contemporary ones. Am I wrong?

Chris

Lewn , I agree
analog is plain fun and for those who love it.
There are some who just want it or heard about its qualities - those minds are to shallow to understand it.

As to the value...................well my TTs combine cost me somewhere around 2K.
I paid almost full price for my MMF7..............the rest was scrap metal that needed a lots of work. Lenco was the most time consuming and needed the most tweaking and tuning tho. Plinth materials are as fallow:
MMF 7 - bamboo 4" butcher block and Walnut arm-board
Lenco - Soapstone top - 2" seated on combo of Baltic Birch and MDF (4 layers sandwiched )
Red Devil (DIY belt) 9 layers MDF & Baltic Birch (sandwiched) with dedicated stand/base.

Merry Christmas
Mariusz

Ketchup -

The old Garrard, Thorens, Lenco, and even the SP-10 were really designed to go into a console of some kind. Some were used in your parents' fruitwood console and some were used in radio station consoles. Not everything from that period of time is revered today, just the statement stuff like Empire and the professional tools like those mentioned above.

All of the tables under discussion pre-date high end audio as we know it and they certainly predate the use of booming, self-powered subs in small rooms. I'm not sure that they needed the isolation required today.

In any event, it isn't really about absolute best performance. The vintage stuff is great because it is still reasonably affordable and you can't say that about comparable modern stuff.

The common comparison being made in this thread by people who are fans of "vintage" TTs is that AFTER new plinths, modern isolation platforms, ensuring the bearing is OK (and sometimes putting a new bearing in), adding a modern state of the art arm, wiring, TT mat, cartridge, and phonostage, the "vintage" TT now compares pretty well with what is out there. I don't see anyone saying that the Lenco in stock form smokes anything modern. There are a few TTs from 20-30yrs ago which can hold their own in stock form but they came in the "hi-fi age", some 25yrs after the Garrard 301. I expect, however, that manufacturers of console-bound tables of the 50s and 60s and DD workhorses from the 70s and 80s were not, at the time, intended to be competitive with the top-tier tables 25-50 years later. I believe it is a combination of a lack of development of motors, plus a certain set of fortunate circumstances (used tables are somewhat cheap, people can use their good arms and carts from previous tables, and for the lucky few who can wield tools with some skill, making a plinth worthy of a top-tier table doesn't cost much in terms of materials (and for the same, the pleasure of making it pays for the time). And the result is an excellent table at a lower out-of-pocket cost (usually) than new rivals, which does what we want it to do, which is spin at 33 1/3rpm all day every day and do absolutely nothing else perceptible to the stylus/record interface.