Garrard 401 or Thorens 125

Most popular vintage turntables are idler drive or direct drive. Some people like me don’t like sound of belt drive turntables. And modern idler drive or good quality, musical DD turntable are creasy expensive. 
I don’t like belt drive turntables because bad PRAT, rubber bloated bass and lousy energy. They don’t play music, just sounds.

Turntables, like many other components of a system deliver a particular sound such that it is not necessarily the case that newer technology results in an improvement if it departs from what you like.  Idler tables have a sound that is hard to find in belt drive tables and they are not made anymore because of their complexity and high cost to manufacture combined with poor measured performance that makes the hard to market.  But, some people like the sound.  Is it nostalgia?  I don’t know, but personal preference is all that matters.  After all, we are talking about a playback method that is “objectively” poor compared to digital but still well liked.

@lewm 

how to dramatically reduce the mechanical noise mostly having to do with plinth building.  The OEM plinth did not do it

I am unaware of an OEM plinth for the Garrard 301?  They did come with a paper template so you could make a mounting board, and a spring set to suspend the board.

I remember as a teenager designing a console to accommodate the Garrard.  By the time the Garrard was handed down to me, it had acquired a plinth made by SME.  Superficially, this has a nice dustcover but the base is pretty flimsy - the bottom is a thin sheet of hardboard.

I agree about the importance of a good plinth.  There seem to be two schools of thought.  Leave the underside as open as possible to let resonances escape, or fill up as much volume underneath as possible to absorb resonances.  I have gone down the latter path.  The SME plinth remains, but it is totally disconnected from the functional plinth hidden inside!

Personally, I would not describe the Garrard as clunky, except that the purely mechanical controls have an old-worlde industrial feel - very positive in action..

@joeycastillo 

just wondering what the reasons are so i can get a better perspective

I had exactly the same curiosity, and also a handed-down Garrard 301.  I was astonished at how much these seem to fetch, and had not really been into vinyl since CDs came out - I mainly listen to classical music.

Helpful posts from @lewm and upgradeitis set in. Several thousand dollars later I had a system that played vinyl at a level of enjoyment roughly equivalent to CDs.

Then I went to a speaker demonstration where the source was a Holbo tangential air-bearing system.  So now I have two turntables and no money, but sound that might surpass SACD quality in enjoyment!

@redclamchowder 

Sorry, I've just remembered that there is one component of my Garrard that has deteriorated - the original rubber mat!  It is a bit frayed round the spindle hole.  A mat is needed to control resonances in the heavy aluminium platter in my opinion.

I replaced it with The Funk Firm's Achromat platter mat.

Since buying what is left of Garrard's turntable business, SME has spent a lot of effort replicating the original rubber mat. Frustratingly, they will only sell it in conjunction with their NOS units, which list for 10s of thousands.  I don't think they plan to sell more than 2 of these a month.