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


My first table was a Garrard SL95-B. It was really nothing to sing about and you had to pay extra for the plastic base. I graduated from that to a Philips GA 212. Thank God it was located on a concrete slab floor. Still nothing special. Then on to a Sony 2251 LA with an SME 2009 tonearm. This was a real upgrade with an Ortofon MC20 cartridge and transformer. I thought I was doing that thing in tall cotton. Then I met Russ Goddard at The Audible Difference in Palo Alto. He told me to bring my setup to his store and we would do a little A-B comparison. After listening for only a minute or two it was obvious My Sony was not any way near a Linn LP 12 of that time. Anyway the point is most of the common tables from people like Garrard, Dual, Marantz, were just imposters to the real thing. I hold no nostalgic emotion to those tables. I was foolish enough to sell my Linn setup when the writing was on the wall around 1999 regarding vinyl. Big mistake!! I sold all my vinyl, my table with an Ittock arm arm and audio technica OC-9 shibata. A SOTA MC Head Amp designed by John Curl (a collectors item today) for $1000.00. Lock me up. I had every cartridge of the day, Koetsu, Supex, GAS, Fidelity Research. My 2 year old son tore the stylus off my Sleeping Beauty Shibata accindently.

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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?