Quote:
Originally Posted by
marly421 
The troubles with these vintage tables are at least threefold.
One: the tonearm arm bearings. Anybody in the know has seen and knows the bearings are completely corroded. The old petroleum grease that was in use back then will attack all metals. If cleaned and the greased changed regularly they had a small chance to survive but few did the work. Also metal to metal interaction creates pitting and this corrosion ruins bearings.
Two: the rubber and plastic do not age well. Rubber disintegrates and plastic becomes inelastic. Brittle unbendable, fragile and breaks from the slightest pressures.
Three: Corrosion at every single connection point. That 35 year old Thorens isn't exempted either.
It’s an obsolete wonder anyone buyers these things, of course the world has its share of dreamers! (being kind here.)
.One: Tonearms
Simples.The best vintage turntables like the Garrards and Thorens for instance are motorboards. The arm is a separate consideration. While I'd agree with you that it's often simplest just to fit a good modern arm like a Rega RB250 which outperforms the vast majority of arms made before 1980, this is probably the biggest single area where vinyl replay has moved on. But no a huge amount has happened since the 1980s even there. The SME V which is often regarded as the best tonearm available dates from this time as well.
But it is possible to have vintage tonearms serviced as well, and brought upto more modern standards. It's a specialist job though to be sure.
Two: Materials.
One of the joys of vintage turntables is that they didn't really use much rubber and plastic. The idler tyre on the aforementioned TD124/301/401 decks requires rebuilding. This costs as little as 30USD. Belts on belt drive turntables need replacing on average every 2-5 years regardless of age.
Materials have moved on but not always for the better, and there were turntable makers like Transcriptors / Mitchell / Sony / Kenwood / Technics to name a few using very experimental materials going back to the 1960s. Acrylics, composite plastics etc. This is not always a good thing. Experiemental Have you ever seen a film called The Man In The White Suit?
Three :Corrosion
Hey now now. If a turntable has been looked after then corrosion isn't so much of an issue. Even it's been left to rot in a garage it can generally be restored, although again this needs specific skills. At least you know where you are with an idler drive turntable made of steel and wood though. These materials are tried and tested over hundreds of years. Plastics don't age nearly so well. Nothing dates so fast as the future as the saying goes....
Whether vintage sounds better than modern is too broad of a generalisation. There is very little modern about most turntable designs anyway as nobody has really thrown serious money at R&D since the Japanese in the late 1970s which of course spurred the rest of the world to up it's game or go to the wall as it did in cars for instance.
So most designs are at least 30 years old. Is that modern? A lot of it comes down to how much skill has gone into maintaining or restoring a vintage deck (how old is vintage?) , but one of the reasons why turntables like the Thorens TD124 or Garrard 301 command such high prices is that nobody makes idler drives any more and they sound completely different to belt drives or direct drives. Once you've heard a good idler drive you will always be conscious of a lack of absolute solidity in the vast majority of decks based on other drive systems.
I have a Lenco 75 and it does sound different, more solid in the bass than any of my direct drives ( Sony Biotracer / Vestax ) or belt drives ( Bang and Olufsen, Thorens, Logic, Sony).
So I would imagine the same is true of a Scout. It's a belt drive with a unipivot arm. It's never going to equal the base slam of any well set up Idler drive, but it will walk all over them in other respects. Horses for courses...
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