Question for the group here. Am currently running a Technics SL-1710 with a Denon DL-103 through an Alva Duo into a CXA81. I got the Technics on eBay, it’s very clean and works great, pitch controls are a bit fidgety but they may just need a deep cleaning.
Have been toying with the idea of getting something like a Rega P3 or Avid Ingenium, would these really be considered an upgrade, would I notice any difference? I am thinking probably not but just wanted to get the opinions of others.
I was responding to the general notion that vintage turntables can have a lot of hidden ‘damage’, that most people would not know how to detect or remedy. I hope i did not give offense-it was not my intention.
Also, the ‘old vs new’ heuristic is of limited value here. Many of the older tables were commodity items, oem-ed by a few factories for the bulk of the name-brand hi-fi companies. “We need a turntable with our brand name on it, with some shiny bits, to sell for $99”… Others were pretty good. Materials Science has improved, but so have greed and inflation…
Making sure that the table, arm and cartridge work well together, as a system is pretty important. So is set-up/alignment. Rega, for example, does not offer easy arm-heght adjsutment (just fixed-thickness shims) as thir cartridges are pretty much plug and play on their arms on their tables. Sound great too. Many tables try to sink the unwanted vibrations into their massive (usually acrylic) platters. Avid uses cork to force the enegery to travel down th arm to get sinked into the subchassis… Completely opposite strategy.
The Denon 103 is not a great choice for the Rega, but may be ok on the Avid.
First…no offense taken! I am however not sure about the notion of “hidden ‘damage’” - most of the functions of a turntable are easily observable: does the platter spin reliably at the designated speed, does the signal travel cleanly to the phono stage without distortion, does the tonearm allow the needle to track accurately across the record surface. Any anomalies with any of these things are fairly obvious.
I am familiar with commodity turntables; I have a Yamaha YP-B2 which is clearly one of these…but it just looks sooo nice! The Technics SL-1600/1700/1800 line are not of the same ilk. I think they may have have been rebadged and sold by others but they were manufactured by Technics (Panasonic) and they were flagship products in their line. Their design has stood the test of time.
Good to know about the Rega. I remain intrigued by the Avid…