Reason for buying old/classic turntables

in the 60's, 70's and early 80's the largest consumer electronics companies in the world were spending their R&D money to perfect the tt technology.....particularly in Japan. especially in the area of direct drive systems. you see that Sony, Pioneer, Technics and a few others designed and built some drive systems mostly better than any modern tt drive system. to match or surpass these drive systems is pretty much (with a couple of exceptions) out of the question based on the economies of scale of today's tt makers. it is easier and cheaper to design a belt driven tt for small makers.

the problem with those 'vintage' tt's was their case design, arms, cartridges and phono stages. all those 'systems' had dramatic limitations which restricted performace.

if you take these superior drive systems; install them in a modern engineered plinth, add a state of the art arm, state of the art cartridge, and state of the art phono stage you have an overall design superior to all but the very top of the heap modern designs.

not every 'vintage' tt is a good candidate for all this attention. you need to research which one to go with.

One thing I do not understand is the recent renewed attraction or romance with direct drive tables. What's wrong with a good belt drive that is well able to rotate the platter at a constant speed. Doesn't a belt design provide a more natural and cost efective means of isolating the platter from motor noise or vibration?

just listen to a top level direct drive tt and you will understand. my opinion is that belts have compromises, direct drive, properly exectuted, does not have compromises. the 'rub' is 'properly executed'. there are dozens of threads about belt verses direct drive. my viewpoint is not universally held.

I'm sure DD tables can sound good as well but the design seems like it would be harder and more expensive to accomplish well than belt drive. Maybe that's part of the appeal?

yes; the cost of designing a direct drive system from a clean sheet of paper and then selling it at a reasonable price could only be done with the economies of scale in the market place of the 60's and 70's. these days it takes a very very expensive tt to have an uncompromised direct drive system. that is the attraction of incorporating the direct drive system of these vintage tt's into a present day tt.

Mapman,

my opinion about DD verses belt drive is based more on my personal listening experience than on the technical merits, although there are many technical merits to support my listening experience conclusion.

i'm likely not enough of a technical guy to do any sort of comprehensive technical explaination of the 'facts'. but i will try to list a few of the areas where DD has clear advantages.

when i say DD i mean tt's such as my Rockport Sirius III, which do execute DD without compromise. there are many very very good tt's which use belts. my perspective is that any of these would sound better with DD.

belts (all of them to one degree or another) have the rubber band effect. the belts stretch and contract. motors have cogging effects. heavy platters compromise things in one way and light platters compromise things in other ways. heavy flywheels can solve certain issues but cause others. ultimately any belt system will allow for groove modulation....which is the speed altering affect of heavy groove friction at musical peaks.

again; there are many belt driven tt's which sound very good. it is not until you hear the same music with a top level direct drive system that you will hear what the 'absense' of these belt-sourced compromises sounds like.

way more space and foundation, ease and naturalness on musical peaks. piano's suddenly sound like real pianos. tonality is spot on and the music flows and soars that little bit extra. it is addicting.

there are many issues which effect tt performance; however getting the speed correct without any variance is one of the most important. belts simply have limitations in this area.

Peter Moncrief wrote a long but helpful article about why Direct Drive is better than Belts...

Direct Drive verses belts