Turntable prices. Is my mind going?

@grislybutter You have to make it shiny to sell it. Cars are the same way. The Italians know that better than anyone. Everything is a matter of style. Appearances.

Ferrari has a history of making some really awful cars, but they have standing because of style like the Testarossa, one of the most functionally awful cars I have ever driven. The Berlinetta Boxer is another beautiful, awful car. The new ones are much better due to CAD. I could run circles around those cars with 911s of the same period.  

Mark Levinson's rules of audio. If it looks cool is sounds better. If it costs a fortune it sounds way better. The myth of the unobtainable. 

Lay instinct aside, the function of a turntable is insanely simple and not hard at all to manufacture for a reasonable price. Those of us with children want to leave them with some security. Pissing money away on flash and exclusivity is a fools game. Worry about one thing and one thing only, function. That is what Edgar Villchur was doing when he designed the AR XA. A turntable that sold for $67.00 that stomped turntables costing several orders of magnitude more. The Modern day version is the Thorens TD1600. 

@tomic601 Sapphire is spelled with two "P"s. The Sapphire was a brilliant. David Fletcher took Edgar Villchur's design and flipped it upside down creating the most stable turntable to date. That design has since been borrowed by SME, Avid, Basis and others. It was never bettered until recently when MinusK's negative stiffness design was adapted by Mark Dohmann for his Helix turntables. Sota in the meanwhile has not stood still. It brought vacuum clamping to consumer turntables, developed a CAD chassis of 1" thick aluminum, had what many consider to be the finest motor and motor controller adapted for their turntables, developed the perfect mat for a turntable and designed a new platter with a neodymium magnet thrust bearing. I like the Cosmos most because it violates Mark Levison's rules of Audio. It is not cool looking and it does not cost a fortune. I can live with that. The Sapphire can have all of these features except the aluminum chassis. 

Why thank you @mahgister. For those who have not read the "Achtung!" Poster you might get a kick out of it. I have no idea who authored it, but I first saw it at an audio store in Akron, Ohio called Golden Gramophone now defunct.  

@grislybutter , I know of plain looking units, but most units get the Goochi treatment first utilized by one of audios capital a--h-les Dan D'Agostino. Remember the gold screws! Dan is still pushing the limits. I would not use his electronics if they were the last on earth. I would rather sing to myself. 

@helomech I know several sets of fossil ears that are way more sensitive than juvenile examples. It may be the monitoring device that counts.

@grislybutter I drove a 355. Wonderful driver. You have to change the timing belts every 10,000 miles. That is an engine out service costing $15,000 at last count. 

@tomic601 Are you suggesting that older 911's are "soulless"? New ones are definitely headed in that direction but nobody I know would characterize and old 911 that way. They reek of soul. They are just a few steps away from a VW Bug which is the most soulful car ever made.