Turntables

[Art]

Up front disclaimer. Except for some audiophiles like Lyman or maybe Merc this video is probably going to be like watching grass grow.

There's a thread on the Political forum that got into old school audio equipment. I mentioned that vinyl had made a big comeback among audiophiles and a land office business is being done now in both vinyl records and turntables to play them on. The old boy in this video goes through 10 iconic turntables, most of which I'd never even heard of and few of which are in my price range.

Our turntable is the sole surviving component from the Magnavox rack system we bought in the mid 1970s. We did have the belt replaced on it in the 1990s but that was a small price to pay, right. Everything else has been replaced except the speakers which are still going strong. In fact the AM/FM receiver/amp has been replaced twice. We sort of have the history of audio/visual in our living room including a cassette deck and a VCR up to DVD/CD player. We don't get music through the air...yet, though we do in our car via Sirius.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCAhllcc_Ew

[dryheat]

That was enjoyable. I have never heard of most of that, but I do know the name Garrard. I didn't know Acoustic Research made a turntable, but I bought a set of AR speakers. They had the best sound in the sound room so I paid the enormous amount of $50 for them. They were in the house for twenty years but the foam around the woofers totally crumbled finally.
My first turntable had a simple system of a rubber drive "knob" that pushed the turntable. I made the mistake of stopping the turntable by hand once(dont ever do that) and it burned a groove in the part. It went "bump" every rotation after that.
I had a wood encased Pioneer receiver with a pretty blue display. Then later everything went to black plastic.

[Allen]

The best stereo I've ever heard was our 1967 RCA color TV, radio, stereo combo. A repairman's nightmare due to the weight. This joker was all wood and about 6' across. The turntable had a "studio strobe" where you could fine tune it after selecting the speed you wanted. In other words 33rpm wasn't always exact so you could adjust it with this built in meter. It had 8 speakers. 18" being the largest. They were oval shaped to fix the cabinet w/o taking up the whole house.

[lyman]

That was enjoyable. I have never heard of most of that, but I do know the name Garrard. I didn't know Acoustic Research made a turntable, but I bought a set of AR speakers. They had the best sound in the sound room so I paid the enormous amount of $50 for them. They were in the house for twenty years but the foam around the woofers totally crumbled finally.
My first turntable had a simple system of a rubber drive "knob" that pushed the turntable. I made the mistake of stopping the turntable by hand once(dont ever do that) and it burned a groove in the part. It went "bump" every rotation after that.
I had a wood encased Pioneer receiver with a pretty blue display. Then later everything went to black plastic.

I recall AR turntables, but I bought DUAL's, still have a direct drive and a belt drive at home, and a 90's vintage one still in the box,
(so 3 turntables, but no microphone)

I, like you dryheat, was enamored by AR sound, a friend's room mate had a set that was 5 foot tall, and sounded absolutely amazing,

so I bought , cause I was not rich, a smaller set, don't recall the cost, but they also dry rotted after about 20 yrs,
now I have a small set of JBL's in the house, but rarely use my system at all


Art, thanks for the compliment,
you probably would have loved the system my Aunt had,
her hubby was stationed in Japan (Air traffic something another) in the Vietnam era, they came home with a wall unit, in stereo, and another in Quad,

she got the quad in the divorce and over the years we ended up the the 8 track player (i sold it on ebay years ago), a reverb unit, (still have that at the house gathering dust) and an Akai reel to reel,
I made a pile of mix tapes (reels) when I was a kid and hooked it up with some old truck speakers in the garage, so I can listen to when I am reloading etc,



FWIW, my parents hot rod setup was a Fisher amp/tuner, and a Gerrard turntable,

[Art]

Quentin Tarentino, who I look on as sort of the evil genius of modern cinema, is very, very retro. He still shoots his movies on film in an age where emulsion photography in cinema has pretty much gone the way of the do do. This obviously involves the extra expense of transferring his movies from the old analog format to digital to accomadate the modern digital projectors. He has said that if the day comes when he can't shoot on film he'll stop making movies.

His love of retro technology can show up in his movies. In "Pulp Fiction" Marcellus and Mia Wallace's house has a stereo system that includes a reel to reel tape deck and a turntable. There is also a vintage looking home intercom system that looks very like the ones you'd see in more expensive houses in the 1970s. You could store a heck of a lot of music on one of those reels.

Lyman, when I was in Korea from 1967-69 in the army there were two things almost every body bought. A good reel to reel tape deck, usually an Akai and one of the excellent Japanese SLR cameras. I still use my 50+ year old Minolta SrT 101 sometimes, especially at stuff like the Grandson's baseball games. It still works like a champ and takes as good pictures as the day I bought it.