Best looking vintage Hifi gear

Hi, the tonearm is probably an original design by Mitchell or an hadcock? Not sure, it was a long time ago. As I said I still have the turntable it needs a new belt. It looks amazing in the flesh. Don’t know how it would compare to modern turntables now.
Thanks for your reply :+1:

I like this vintage design.

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Hi, HH, I don’t doubt that you’re right about the make of amp, but that looks astonishingly like the original Boothroyd Stuart Meridian design for their range of preamps and power amps. They were highly regarded back in the day (although I never got a chance to hear them then).

B & O 1200 turntable.

I had one of these, back in the dim and distant … … … … a joy to behold.

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Oh, that’s just amazing. SU-G700?

I owned Technics as my first gear, it didn’t look as good as that. No problem at all with modern vintage when it looks that good.

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Yes, they do a 1000 as well, but it looks a little more clunky than this.

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@dave-marshall …I had one also… a 1202 …circa 1975…looked fab …bought on looks alone. It was my 2nd turntable after a BSR MP60 so a great improvement. I even splashed out and had the hinged lid which IIRC was an optional extra.

Sorry, reading my post back it wasn’t very clear. What I meant was that the amp I got after the A60 was the Meridian.

Yup, once seen at the B & O dealers, I just 'ad to 'ave it … … … it simply outclassed everything else around at the time … … … well, on looks, at least.

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Thanks, HH. Did the Meridian sound anything like as good as it looked?

I remember that that Meridian was often used to power a monster active Meridian loudspeaker - was it something such as a 105?

It was ok but probably not a big step from the A&R in some ways. I had it for three or four years, until I went to Naim in 1983. The 105 was the bigger monoblock power amp. The speakers were M2 and M3. The 101 with the stand mount M3 was very good.

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The Garrard 301 and 401 models still have their admirers today. They look the dog’s doohdahs. and the build quality is said to be outstanding (think brick outhouse).

Some British company somewhere brings them bang up to date these days, and I believe that our esteemed Richard Dane uses one with an ARO tonearm.

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Well, I got the concept right, but not the names!

Always liked the look of the Dieter Ram’s Braun products. Integrated with Vitsoe 606 System.

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The king of boomboxes, and the apex of 1980s portable audio styling…

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Unless I’m mixing up my German industrial designers, Dieter Rams came up with the radical redesign of the Quad Electrostatic loudspeaker, which was termed the LE1.

Manfred Stein of Quad Musikwiedergabe near Koblenz in Germany will build you a brand new pair of LE1s if you want to go down that route. I’ve heard them, and can tell you that they sound wonderful.

(I have three pairs of ESL57s made for me by Manfred’s team.)

All you will need is a Bauhaus designed home to live with them in!

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I had one of these in the late 80s…it never took batteries though, but did all separate and connected up with ribbon cables. Performance wise it was pretty dire. I thought it looked cool back in the day.

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Saw Clockwork Orange…lusted after …never got one…maybe one day.

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