What's all the fuss about late 70s and earl 80s run of the mill midfi turntables?

@curiousjim      I never found the Zerostat worked well on those fortunately few LPs that got static.  But a few times it was so bad a small crack could be heard when the edge of the disc was earthed.  I bought a Nitty Gritty years ago and still have it.  It cleans the few discs I need to clean very well.

But I have never had the problems you cite with new records.  Yes some had pressing faults you could see and I sent them back.  What kind of cartridges and arms have you used?   I did find when I changed to MC years ago from Shure V2 and V3 that the surface noise diminished a lot.  That was because tracking at 2.5g is a lot more secure and cut through a lot of the crap compared with floating around at 0.95g which was Shure's boast when the idea was to reduce tracking weight as low as possible.  I recall Beograms had  light tracking force.  A silly idea - none of my records has ever worn out - except my original Blonde on Blonde that I played incessantly in 1966 and beyond on my father's Garrard with a flip-over cart, massive 'needle' and a spring applied tracking force that must have been at least 3-4g.  I've got lots of other BonBs now, but that was an original mono bought on the first day, hard to find now.

The ’Vinyl Revival’ has created a market for a new segment of buyers who never grew up with a turntable. They want a turntable but they have no experience. Meanwhile, because of decades of vinyl sales there are literally thousands of turntables for sale worldwide. To someone who knows zip about turntables: A turntable is a turntable is a turntable. They all play records, don’t they?

Sellers gleefully get to sell turntables that no experienced Vinylista would touch with a barge pole. New and Used.

My mother in law just turned 92 and is doing pretty well but wants to clear out her house .  I took the Gerrard that the 6 kids played in seventies and not since.  The mat and belt had rotted out and I replaced them.  It turns out the cart and tonearm were manufactured as a unit and I left than in place after checking the alignment with the owner of a local record store.  I plugged it into the same AVR that my Technics 1500 resides in, (AVR has a phono input with grounding), and even my determinedly non Audiophile wife could easily perceive the difference .  It played, no audible distortion or hum, but just sounded grey opaque and much noisier.  

@mahler123

Too bad it didn't sound good.  Perhaps the rubber suspension components of the cartridge had deteriorated?  Would replacing the arm and cartridge be worth considering?