First turntable was a Garrard back in the late 70s. I soon got rid of it for a music centre as I knew it must be rubbish. It just looked so retro and old fashioned.
Yes, I was an idiot, but I was a young idiot and had only 'common sense' to go on.
Later I brought a Rega 3. Great no fuss deck, but I increasingly became aware of the performance ceiling that no suspension mods or cartridge upgrades could do much about.
So I eventually moved to the highly worshipped Linn LP12 with the Ittok arm that many claimed was state of the art.
It was a definite upgrade, more scale more bandwidth, but eventually performance/setup inconsistencies and a growing awareness of that either you love or hate Linn colouration, plus the arrival of first child and unavailability of certain releases on vinyl, all led me to temporarily ditch vinyl.
Nowadays I look forward to getting back into vinyl at some point. Probably via one of the Technics SL 1200 decks.
For me being an audiophile and vinyl enthusiast are inseparable.
