S888Wheel wrote:
From: "Arny Krueger"
Date: 5/6/2004 4:28 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:
S888Wheel wrote:
OTOH I think many innovations over the years have improved the sound
from the table/arm/cartridge part of LP playback since the early
days of LPs.
I remember listening to LPs about 4 years after they were
introduced. To say that the sound quality of playback equipment
improved since then is a gross understatement. IMO, the rate of
improvement was fairly decent until the early 70s.
What was SOTA in the early seventies?
There was no agreement. I still had the TD-125 I bought in the late 60s all
through the 70s and into the 80s. While there were new models, most if not
of its innovations and refinements had been picked up by others.
The AR table?
Not hardly. It was a child of the 60s, and by the 70s it was clearly
obsolete. I bought my first one around 1965. Its arm was falling behind
cartridge technology by 1969.
What cartridge?
Again, it depended who and what you believed. Shure was flogging the V-15
series quite successfully. I had several. The ADC XLM was impressing some
people. I had one. MC cartridges were becoming more popular.
What arm?
Again, who to believe, what to believe? I had a 3009II, but it was not the
latest-greatest any more.
That is way before my time. I got into it around 83. Then
the Goldmund Reference was state of the art. That was superceded by
the Versa Dynamics 2.0. IMO a pretty noticeable improvement.
In what sense?
Then the Rockport then the Forsell. Each a noticeable improvement over the
one before it.
In what sense?
These tables all pretty much all kill the old AR tables.
The AR turntable was always a value play, not a SOTA play. It was a rehash
of earlier technology. Weathers did a clock-motor lightweight turntable in
the late 50s. Empire had done a turntable with a soft damped suspension and
hidden separate platform for the table and arm (598) a few years earlier.
The AR arm was never all that good - it had friction problems.
The charm of the AR TT was its price, which initially started at just over
$50, which was also the street price of Garrard's second-most-expensive
changer. You could have a Garrard AT-6 or a AR TT for about the same money.
The Garrard rumbled, had a stiff, undamped suspension and tinny chassis, and
was actually a cheaper model with fancier arm, turntable overlay, and trim.
Dual was still finding their niche. The first changer they exported was a
sight to see. Quirky is an understatement. The cartridge retracted and the
tone arm rode over the turntable on little wheels looking for the edge of
the record. If it didn't find the edge of the record it presumed the record
was 12". It had only a 10" TT platter. Due to the mechanical complexity it
was not the most reliable thing.
The competitive Miracord changers looked great but rumbled, fluttered and
had questionable tone arms.
Empire sold a lot of massive turntables for far higher prices, but their
massive tonearms were not well-suited for high-compliance cartridges.
Phillips had a neat-looking turntable in the late 60s called the GA-312 that
was sort of a low-priced mass-produced clone of the TD-125. There was also
the Lenco turntable that looked cool, but had a high-friction arm.
People were still buying Rek-O-Kut turntables which hadn't changed much
since the 50s. Arms by ESL and B&O were seen around. Japanese arms were not
being imported in large volumes until the early 70s. ADC did not come out
with the Pritchard arm until then. I replaced my AR with a TD-125 in the
late 60s and I was very happy with the combination for over 10 years.
Am I overlooking something from the early seventies that competes
with these more modern tables?
I see no unbiased evidence that in practice any modern turntable
outperforms the better turntables of the late 60s, say a Thorens TD-125. The
only technological advance in turntables I am aware of since the TD-125's
introduction in the late 60s, relates to clamping warped records to try to
flatten them out. And that feature lacks anything like broad application.
The soft but well-damped suspension, belt drive, electronic speed control,
low rumble, low flutter and wow, were all there in the late 60s.
As far as arms go, the geometry problem was solved decades ago. Appropriate
miniature low-friction bearings were and are off-the-shelf items. The
big-tube designs look cool, but which vendor has published before-and-after
frequency response curves showing that there were resonances in the best
earlier designs that the big-tube design eliminated?