Inexpensive Good Vintage Turntables?


I'm considering buying a turntable again. I've been without one for going on 10 years. This time around, could you recommend some really good inexpensive models (prefer belt but DD OK, too). And carts (preferably modern) that will work with them? And who are good online sellers of restored models? I know very little about vintage turntables ...

greg7

Showing 2 responses by clearthinker

Yep.  Vintage turntables are often better than today's over-designed, over-weight blingy monsters employing all the wrong materials like wood and carbonfibre just to be vogue.

Whatever happened to honest engineering?  I would far sooner have that than fashion.

@pindac 

"Aviation and Performance Vehicles are using Wood Products produced using very accurate and reliable methods for their construction, these wood products can be machined to have the tightest of tolerances, no different to a metal and will remain stable to perform as per their designed for function in all environments met."

All woods move over time, however intensively or carefully they are prepared.  This makes wood unsuitable for critical engineering applications where minimum tolerances are critical.  To utilise it in turntables is just fashion bling, not good engineering design.

If you want to fly in a wooden plane that is your privilege but I doubt you will find one - they went out 100 years ago, in the 1920s, save for the Mosquito fighter/bomber plane that the UK created in WW2 because of shortage of metals.  My mother's first husband died in one..  Neither do I know of any wooden performance vehicles, unless you count the Morgan car, a design also perfected nearly 100 years ago.

"The use of such materials are much more planet friendly as their production is not as energy absorbing as metals..."

You must be a scientist as, like most of the others, you have not evaluated the causes of environmental damage correctly.  By far the most costly elements of product production and use are the creation and disposal of the product.  So to retain an already extant product in use for a longer period and not replace it with a new one, however environmentally friendly its producer claims it to be, will always trump the production of a new item.  When will scientists understand this very simple fact?  Your post does belatedly acknowledge this principle in your para 8, which  partially contradicts your para 4.

An example of this that really irks me is the battery car.  The battery lasts for 8 years, maybe 10, and when it fails to hold its charge the car is scrapped (along with the battery) because producers have elected to integrate the battery in the structure of the car, rather than make it removeable/replaceable as I advocated nearly 10 years ago.  In the result twice as many cars have to be constructed and scrapped compared with the ICE car that typically remains in use for more than 20 years.  Duurrrrrr.