My first turntable (not counting my parents' "Victrola") was the legendary Acoustic Research (AR) AR-XA. I used the AR from the late 1960's until 1972, when I purchased my first "serious" turntable; a used Thorens TD-125 (which had a Rabco SL-8E linear tonearm). I also owned a variety of other turntables during the 1970's (all purchased used), including the Ariston RD-11s and a number of Japanese direct drives. Not surprisingly, I ended the decade with the (then already famous) Linn Sondek LP-12.

However, an amazing number of important turntable innovations occurred in the 1980's. Fortunately for me, I owned an audio store during almost this entire decade. This enabled me to hear virtually every serious model, either in my home, my store or both. While I was a dealer for only a few of the manufacturers, this still didn't hold me back. I made certain, with a generous trade-in policy, direct imports, along with loaners and organized "shootouts", to hear everything possible. There are far too many turntables in this group to list, but my own personal turntable choices are a different matter...

I first replaced the Linn Sondek with a (second generation) Oracle, but that was itself soon replaced by the (original) Townshend Rock in 1982/3. The Rock withstood all challengers, but I eventually sold it because my listening room lacked a stable temperature. This, in turn, meant that the Rock (with its high viscosity oil bearing) would have variable RPM speed day-to-day, which drove me crazy, so I replaced it with a (late model) Goldmund Studio and T-3F tonearm.

Near the end of the decade, I had the Versa Dynamic Models 1 & 2 (one of which was an employee "loaner"). However, I eventually returned back to the same Goldmund Studio (now with a SME V tonearm), mainly to eliminate the complexity of operating and maintaining the Versa. While I really enjoyed the Goldmund/SME combination, it was not as good a performer as either the Rock or Versa models, when all of them were fully optimized. Since then, things have been very different...

In late 1992, I purchased the top-of-the-line Forsell Air Force Reference. Unlike Forsell's standard "Air Reference" model, the "Air Force" also had a flywheel, which (the manufacturer claimed) increased the platter's inertia 40 times; in effect going from 25 to 1,000 lbs!"