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Japanese hi-end audio civil war-70s and 80s.

Wow, amazing pictures! The engineering in the better Japanese turntables of the ‘70s raised a bar that hasn’t been touched since. Just stunning.
 
If you can, flip down to the Stax electronics section (P13 or thereabouts). No idea how they sounded but just looking at them is enough, who needs music.
 
Tony L said:
Wow, amazing pictures! The engineering in the better Japanese turntables of the ‘70s raised a bar that hasn’t been touched since. Just stunning.
Click to expand...
And then they did much the same with CD in the 80's.
 
I once had dinner with Neil Irwin who was a former head of production for Garrard before they went over to Brazil. Like me he had a habit of watching his goldfish go round and round in the garden pond whilst sipping whisky as a way to wind down from the hassle of the office.

He reckoned that Garrards demise was that everyone in the factory was committed to improving the quality of the 301s and the later 401s but did not give a damn about what plinth the customer placed the record player in. It was customary for a dealer to sell the customer a 301/401 and then expect the customer to source his own plinth and even fit it himself. What happened in practice was that the dealers sold the high quality record player and then fitted it into some cheap old bit of junk that they could buy for peanuts. This was like fitting a Rolls Royce engine into a Morris Minor engine bay and the result was a customer paying a lot of money for an overall poor product package.

This contrasted with the Japanese companies who sold their complete unit which came complete, was easy to set up and sounded good from the moment it was played. The main thing, however, was that it sounded as good as the 401 / cheap plinth package but was considerably cheaper.
 
That thread really is an amazing picture resource. I’m only up to page 4 and I’ve seen a lot of stuff I wasn’t even aware of, and I’m a right geek with this sort of thing!
 
Mike P said:
And then they did much the same with CD in the 80's.
Click to expand...

I don't own a great deal of Japenese equipment, but what I do own are all splendid performers.

My last purchase was a Nagatron Z ~Coupler Model Ag 9200. This is a MC transformer wired throughout with pure silver wire.

The company went bankrupt. Some entrerprising American woman bought up the remaining stock. I bought this one off her. I should have bought the rest of her stock as well.

I have owned some pretty good MC stepup transformers. This Nagatron is just so much better than all of them. I would not have believed it if I read this.

It seems that the reason for Japenese superiority lies in their propensity to pay close attention to very fine detail.

I could give examples. I will confine myself to a tea kettle I recently imported- at great cost- from Japan.

It is just so much more beautiful and 'user friendly' than any other kettle I have ever seen. It has a large number of detailed features.
 
staggeringly clever and well-engineered stuff.

I wish I could:

a) afford a properly fettled Nak. tape deck with full auto-azimuth adj. etc, etc.
and
b) that commercial small-format tapes were (properly) a thing again.

going by recent gear-acquisition and listening sessions to old pre-recordeds, I'd be done.

(btw, for anyone reading - the thing about 'baking' old pre-recorded tapes in a food dehydrator to get them to play ok (consequent material shedding during play notwithstanding) is a good 'thing' - it works, pretty much every time. Seems to be more effective than rehousing in a new shell - although doing both is recommended!)
 
Woke up from a dream that Linn LP12 had gone DD.
That Denon with the soft leather cushion on the front end is pretty kinky.
Miss my old Revox turntable. A cool item.
 
Tony L said:
Wow, amazing pictures! The engineering in the better Japanese turntables of the ‘70s raised a bar that hasn’t been touched since. Just stunning.
Click to expand...
IMG_6925.jpg
 
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