THE GOLDEN AGE OF TURNTABLES!

The Golden Age of Record Players is more like it. These were the years everyone played records. They got a lot better, sure. But almost all his examples are record players - changers, automatics, semi-autos- what people who don't know audio lump into one thing and call turntables. 

Another thing about a genuine Golden Age, they tend to be a time when standards were so high we can hardly believe it even today. The time frame he's talking about was for example a Golden Age of Recording, for sure.

Mastering and Pressing, maybe even. And record players. But turntables? No my friend. That is now. We are living it. This is the Golden Age of Turntables.

I suppose it depends on how you define ’golden age’.

Is it about the product being ubiquitous and all pervasive?
The answer would be a simple yes, since every household had at least one.

Is it about the quality standard of the product?
The answer would be yes and no. The large majority of turntables served the purpose of playing records, but were of mediocre quality, indeed in contrast to the high quality of the recordings and the records themselves (like those 50’s and early ’60’s blue notes, Decca’s, RCA living stereo’s, etc.)
At the same time the brands that dominated this record player mass market also manufactured statement products to secure their reputation and boost sales of their cheaper products. Even after 40 years or more these state of the art products are still the ’golden standard’ for many audiophiles. We all have our favorites: the big EMT idler drive, the big Japanese direct drives, the big Micro belt drives, the Thorens Reference, etcetera. So yes, it was also the Golden Age of the (serious) Turntable.

Is it about the profitability for the manufacturers?
Record players sold by the truckloads and obviously made a nice profit through their economies of scale. But I would say that today’s market is the real Golden Age of the Turntable Manufacturer.

In my country The Netherlands we say that the 16th century was our ’golden age’. It was a period of international trade and great wealth accumulation, albeit only for a very small group. Ring a bell?
Their wealth gave rise to the city of Amsterdam and sponsored the great art of Rembrandt and others. The global elite in our hypercapitalist world no longer buy portrait paintings from artists to show off their good fortune. They buy other ’trophies’, like boats, cars, wristwatches and, yes, turntables. So perhaps the 'Gilded Age' of early 20th century industrialist society is a more apt comparison.

Anyway, it’s a Golden Age for manufacturers of these luxury products. It took a while, but high end audio has finally managed to tap into this world. It explains the current exorbitant prices and - probably - large profit margins. 

But turntables? No my friend. That is now.

If the "golden age" is now, i understand why we must pay almost in gold for those modern and ugly belt drive high-end turntables  

Hi,
we are comparing the golden age of industry vs the golden age of individuals.

The Dutch Golden Age was between 1575 and 1675, so roughly the 1600's and not the 16th century as I wrote. Apologies for this stupid mistake..... 😕

@edgewear It was all about Tulips!

In 1636, according to an 1841 account by Scottish author Charles MacKay, the entirety of Dutch society went crazy over exotic tulips. As Mackay wrote in his wildly popular, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, as prices rose, people got swept up in a speculative fever, spending a year’s salary on rare bulbs in hopes of reselling them for a profit.

Mackay dubbed the phenomenon “The Tulipomania.”

“A golden bait hung temptingly out before the people, and one after the other, they rushed to the tulip-marts, like flies around a honey-pot,” wrote Mackay. “Nobles, citizens, farmers, mechanics, sea-men, footmen, maid-servants, even chimney-sweeps and old clothes-women, dabbled in tulips.”

When the tulip bubble suddenly burst in 1637, Mackay claimed that it wreaked havoc on the Dutch economy.

Tulip price index from 1636-1637. The values of this index were compiled by Earl A. Thompson in Thompson, Earl (2007), "The Tulipmania: Fact or artifact?", Public Choice 130, 99–114 (2007).

Public Choice/CC BY-SA 3.0

“Many who, for a brief season, had emerged from the humbler walks of life, were cast back into their original obscurity,” wrote Mackay. “Substantial merchants were reduced almost to beggary, and many a representative of a noble line saw the fortunes of his house ruined beyond redemption.”

But according to historian Anne Goldgar, Mackay’s tales of huge fortunes lost and distraught people drowning themselves in canals are more fiction than fact. Goldgar, a professor of early modern history at King’s College London and author of Tulipmania: Money, Honor and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, understands why Mackay’s myth-making has endured.

Tulipmania was the frenzy of the booming 17th century Dutch merchant economy. Not unlike the speculative financial ’products’ in our current global economy, that wreaked havoc in 2008.

Are you suggesting Turntables are today’s Tulips? 😂

BS, turntables have never been better. I can understand the nostalgia but I could care less. I want the best sound and modern turntables and cartridges have the old stuff beat by a mile. I know this will piss some people off. If all you can afford is older used stuff I would rather buy equivalently priced new stuff. There are some very fine relatively inexpensive tables out there. 

very interesting this. Doesn't it depend how you define it? Relative to time considering it in terms of the media that people bought it must have been the 70s' before CD came along. I think the late 70s' had the best technology relative to time as well when the likes of Sony, Kenwood, Pioneer et al really put their corporate boffins to making great turntables. The EMT motor is still used now, I think Koetsu may have started in the 70s'. A lot of people think that they have re-invented the wheel particularly cartridges - think again. Lets be honest a cheap Airpax motored 3 spring deck was considered the best turntable in the UK for over a decade. Of course right now we have access to the knowledge and wealth of info gleaned, and if lucky people with the skills to make turntables, but we can then argue that this is the greatest moment in time as we know more than ever before. LP is competing with CD's, streaming, on line media and gaming - god knows what else. Back then - the TV.

@mijostyn, you don't bother me in the least, but you sound a bit pissed off yourself. I'm happy for you that you enjoy modern turntables and cartridges. Why can't you let other folks enjoy the old stuff? Turntable won't bring down the economy, so there's no reason to get upset....

Phhh, the golden Age ... in former years engineers made the stuff, the competition was high but everyone was living. Some of the older ones survived because the passed the test of time even today.
After CD everyone noticed that analog is more than missing a remote control. You can feel it, touch it etc. and you can keep the hobby alive by equipment rolling. I don't talk about sound quality...but reissues survived it. Today the market is loaded with every design you can imagine, same for Arms etc. Not easy to find something outstanding for a fair price. 
Yes, maybe the overall quality was better years ago ... cheap design/production is common now...

Btw when i said EMT motor i meant cartridge motor. Maybe we should first set out the dark age.. i suggest the 80’s and 90’s - linn, cd’s, shoulder pads😉
Whilst records were not mainstream at least dj’s kept them alive - its what got me into this

Tulipmania in these days are wiring prices. It's a golden age for cableman.

A lot of technologies in cartridges are lost especially in MM and MI. The only bright side is return of Technics.

Those ’Golden and Dark Ages’ in analog were not synchronous either.

The Golden Age of analog recording probably ended in the late ’60’s, with the introduction of solid state and multitracking. Many of the great audiophile labels (Decca, RCA, Mercury, EMI, Blue Note, etc.) already lost their way in the ’70s, years before digital arrived.

The Golden Age of analog record players - Turntables - ended in the early ’80s on a real high, with the various statement tables like technics SP-10mk3, Pioneer Exclusive P3, Kenwood L-07D, Denon DP-100, Sony PS-X9, Micro SX-8000mk2, Thorens Reference, etc. This came to an abrupt end with the arrival of the CD.

Of course the later ’80s and ’90s were the Dark Age of ’perfect sound forever’, but the vinyl Renaissance that started early this century is developping into another Golden Age. The market is getting bigger, there’s more competition, more R&D, etc.

All that is great, but what’s new? To many ’experts’, the current King of Turntables is the TechDas AirForce Zero. This is a Micro SX-8000mk2 ’in extremis’, to the tune of $150k. It is even developped by the same designer, who must be of a venerable age by now.

So while I haven’t seen much real innovation in turntable, tonearm and cartridge design, this certainly is a Golden Age of the Phono Amplifier, both tube and solid state. As much as I enjoy the ’old stuff’ for turntables, tonearms and cartridges, you do need a top level modern phono amplifier to bring out their best.

Hi,
why do i have the feeling that the inspired and top notch tt’s of yesterday if manafactured with todays standards and materials would most likely outperform (in musicality at least) the majority of current silly designs? Everything is not information retrieval, if cannot play the song. All of the above mentioned by @edgewear plus a few more will sure do. Even that scottish suspended one with airpax motor and that english one from the 50’s stand the test of time, especially the latter is again in production, at a cost. Only thing that changed is media revealing what we were not aware of at the time.

@petg60, 

"Only thing that changed is media revealing what we were not aware of at the time"

If by this you mean audiophile reissues, even that ain't the truth. The best original vinyl pressings from the Golden Age will sound better than those reissues. Really? Really.

Hi,
probably misstyped, press is the right word. Original pressings do sound better, no argue here.

First Dutch economist are the so called ''mercantilist''. Their
theory was in short: ''buy cheap and sell expensive''. This was
in correspondence  with  their experience with the West Indian 
Company . What they overlooked was  the monopoly position
of this company ensured by their Navy. Ricardo refuted this
theory by asking the question: ''what will happen when we all
try to do so''? 
Tuliponania was also in correspondence with experience. 
Each day higher prices on the stock exchange... 
Well what would happen Ricardo anticipated but, alas, not many
Dutchman.   

Dear petg60, the only thing the audio 'press' does is to hide the truth and try to convince us that the newest is always the best. It is what keeps the business going. They're the industry's mouthpiece.....

Dear Nandric, do you mean Turntables ARE today's Tulips? They seem to follow the "buy cheap and sell expensive" theory of  'mercantilism'. Come to think of it, so do Cartridges. Even more so, as they don't require much stuff to buy at all, cheap or otherwise. But everyday higher prices......

Dear edgewear, As novice in Holland I was wondering about
their expression ''expensive like pepper''. The reason for
my wondering was the fact that one could buy pepper for
1 euro sufficient for, say, 6 months. After ''some'' learning I
discovered why. Their Indian company bought spices for
cheap in Asia and sold expensive to European rich. Some
expressions become ''tradition'' by use despite loosing any
sense. But sense  and ''meaning'' are obviously not the
same . The meaning was to express what expansive means.
Not to denote things which are actually expensive . You must
 have heard about ''piramide funds''.Those are not much
 different then  Dutch ''obsession''  with tulips. 'There are also
''some new kinds of money'' without any Central bank involved.
So despite their ''wrong theorie'' the Dutch were the richest
people in the world. For A.Smit an example for his theory
about ''wealth of nations''. The first ''classical economic theory''.
One need to be modest when his income does not allow
''everything''. So I collect cartridges but abandoned other kinds
of our ''objects of desire and obsession''. 

Deur Nandric, collecting cartridges is one of the most rational obsessions I can imagine 😊. Not at all like Tulips or Magical Financial Products..... 

But it's not always easy to explain why certain 'objects' are expensive. Scarcity is one reason, obviously. In the 17th century pepper was scarce in the West and the Indian Company controlled the market, they were one of the first monopolists.
Desire and obsession is another, often fuelled by agressive brand marketing and peer pressure. This is how luxury markets like designer fashion operate: $1000 sneakers or $10k handbags anyone? There's absolutely no relation between the actual cost of making these products (modern slavery) and their market price.

But when both reasons coincide, prices really explode. Like in fine arts, classic cars and any number of truly rare objects of cultural importance.

Where does this leave our little hobby? Some 'old stuff' is rare and  desirable because of their classic design, performance or reputation. Some Turntables and even Cartridges do apply. Some of the 'new stuff' is rare because it is manufactured in 'limited editions'. The high prices make these products desirable as 'trophies for the rich'. Their validity as high quality products is justified by glowing reviews of the audio 'journalists', who are an extension of the marketing strategy.

Everybody has to decide for themselves if they want to play along with their game.....

Dear edgewear, ''rational obsession''? You are very .kind to me(grin).

edgewear, I'm not upset at all. I can understand the romantic notions people have with the past. I drive an old 911 because it has a character missing in the new cars. I also have a new one which from a performance standpoint is far superior but the old one is more fun to drive. As far as Hi Fi is concerned it is all about performance and in general new equipment outperforms old equipment. Most of us start with what we can afford and then start climbing the ladder one piece at a time. If I bought an old TD 124 it would be for display purposes only. I couldn't use it. The rumble would drive my subwoofers crazy and my house would shake apart. I'm actually not kidding. I would never buy a used cartridge. I don't even re tip them. The next cartridge is always up the ladder, more expensive and better in every way. The old ones just sit in a drawer. I do like having several cartridges now that I can afford it. It is like having several cars. But unlike cars with cartridges I never look down only up. Same with turntables. The only reason to get a new one is to improve performance. Why would somebody trade in a turntable for one that does not perform as well? Because it has a classy old patina to it? The golden age? Most of those turntables are not made today because nobody wants them. You going to trade in your Rega for an old Dual? The people who bought Duals are the ones who now just stream. It is purely a convenience thing for them. 
If your thing is old stuff wonderful, but don't tell me your buying that stuff because it sounds or works better. There are other motives at play so you tell me! There may be some older stuff that if cared for may work passably well in modern systems like an old SME tonearm or a 1980s SOTA Sapphire. You can modify old Acoustats and get them close to SOTA and I am sure there are others. Some equipment can be totally rebuilt and taken up to modern spec like they do with some tape decks. They have to as there are very few if any new ones. They have been replaced by the hard drive. 
I think the intent should be getting the best sound you can within your budget. If you can find an older piece that will outperform a new piece at the same price point then by all means go for it. I use speakers from the 1980's because the only speaker I like better is the Sound Labs 845 which I can't quite afford yet. 
It is all about the music.

I drive an old 911 because it has a character missing in the new cars.

Life is good?

 I also have a new one which from a performance standpoint is far superior but the old one is more fun to drive.

Luxury life must be even better 

If I bought an old TD 124 it would be for display purposes only. I couldn't use it. The rumble would drive my subwoofers crazy and my house would shake apart. I'm actually not kidding.

There is a list of outstanding Direct Drive turntables above from @edgewear and you are here again with something else (like that old Thorens). Bad example. 

I would never buy a used cartridge. I don't even re tip them. The next cartridge is always up the ladder, more expensive and better in every way.

Very nice, the key point is "more expensive" which is always better in your imagination. The "high-end" industry is still alive because people like you can throw $20k for a cartridge? You are there or going there slowly? If it's good for you - it's fine, but do not expect everyone will do that (for many reasons). 

I must admit that audiophiles and music lovers are not always rich people to play games with those cartridge or turntable manufacturers who asking a price of space shuttle for their audio gear. 

But those people have ears and they are able to separate some BS from outstanding equipment from the past @mijostyn  

To my surprise many modern high-end manufacturers have ZERO experience with top of the line vintage models of turntables or even cartridges. It was impossible to buy many of them in the past because it was analog world, and now when we can find almost everything with the internet from any part of the world, those people are not interested in vintage high-end. Instead they are offering something else and promising us a better quality. They are judging about vintage gear using their memories from the 70's/80's, but we're suing vintage cartridges with modern phono stages and modern speakers etc.   

@mijostyn, actually we may not be that far apart. I also made gradual upward steps over many years to increase performance level. From 1990’s Krell amplification (KRC HR + KPE Ref and FPB600) to 2000’s Boulder (1008, 1010 and 1060) and from 1990’s Magnepan MG20 to 2010’s MG20.7. In these cases newer really was better. As a digital source I use a 1990’s Krell 20i cd player, because digital is not my priority and this machine can still pretty much hold its own, even against latest generation players.

However, I did go back to the ’old stuff’ with vinyl playback. Why? I had worked my way up to a TW acoustic Raven GT SE with Black Night battery drive, Reed 3P tonearm and vdHul Colibri XPW African Blackwood (the one with the platinum coils, no longer available). This combo sounded great, but the TW gave persistent speed issues (even after two service trip to the manufacturer) and I lost confidence in that table.

I decided to try my luck with a Micro RX-1500 and simply couldn’t believe my ears. Initially it took some effort (adding a stainless steel one-on-one replica of the RT-2000 plateau, CU-180 copper mat and R-15 mass loaded stainless steel feet) but the performance with the same Reed/vdHul combo was eye (or ear) popping. This definitely didn’t sound like a backward step in any way. I haven’t missed that TW for even a ’micro’ second.......

The Micro also invited the possibility to add more tonearms (and cartridges), a prospect I simply couldn’t resist. Enter the FR-64s and Audiocraft AC-4400 tonearms and a whole range of cartridges from Ortofon, FR, Dynavector, Ikeda, Takeda, etcetera. All ’old stuff’ from the 20th century. To my disbelief I noticed these ’oldies’ could perform at the same level as the Reed/vdHul reference, played on the same Boulder/Magnepan system. I started to see a pattern.....

So this is not some ’nostalgia for the old folks’, but an truly open minded comparison on a level playing field. No mistake, I still love my Reed/vdHul set up, which is still considered reference grade by many so called experts, but I can equally enjoy many of the vintage arm/cartridge combinations I listen to. In some cases even more so.