Hugh Laurie once said that as an adolescent he had somehow managed to be both fat and thin at the same time. As Laurie knew, juxtaposing opposites in this manner – in other words, being oxymoronic – is amusing. And I too was amused, and at the same time disturbed, when I recently came across an example of oxymoronic hi-fi.
I noticed an issue of Stereophile in a local newsagent. On the cover was a Garrard 301 in a custom wooden plinth and with what looked like a vintage 12-inch SME tonearm. Although I admire the Garrard 301, I didn’t find the Stereophile setup especially arresting because this combination has become a bit of a cliché, and I assumed that the cover picture meant that the magazine contained an article on retro hi-fi. But the caption on the cover said: ‘the new Garrard 301’. And as it turned out, the magazine was reviewing a 301 that is both old and new at the same time.
When the 301 was introduced in 1953 it was successful in the emerging home-hi-fi market in Britain, and in the broadcasting industry, where its idler-drive-system, featuring a monster AC motor that would not be out of place in a washing machine, meant that the platter could bring the new long-play records up to an acceptable speed almost instantly. In America and Australia (in the form of our own behemothic Commonwealth turntables) this industry-orientated trajectory continued with ‘broadcast’ turntables that were rarely seen in domestic systems. But in Britain the Garrard 301 and its 1960s successor the 401 found favour in both commercial and domestic environments. Rumble, the Achilles heel of idler drives, was not really an issue because the broadcasting and playback equipment of the time largely lacked the ability to reproduce it.
In the 1970s idler-drive turntables were replaced by belt drives in domestic hi-fi, and by direct drives in commercial (and some domestic) environments. Although this occurred in the name of progress, it is now difficult not to see other factors in the mix, especially cost. In the early 2000s, moreover, audiophiles began to see that this ‘progress’ had at the same time been regress; they realised that the old idlers possessed an unequalled ability to convey musical energy. The rumble problem, too, was solved – largely as a result of Peter Reinders’ ground-breaking restoration work with vintage Lenco turntables which highlighted the role played by the material and design of the plinth that houses a turntable chassis.
Appreciating the qualities of these old Lencos was an important element in the emergence of a wider interest in vintage turntables that is still gathering pace. But the Garrard 301 has managed to be both typical of this trend and, at the same time, unique. Its typicality lies in it being one of the ‘go-to’ turntables of the retro hi-fi movement. As well as Lencos, other turntables including the 301’s successor the 401, and those manufactured by Sugden, Thorens, Rek-O-Kut, Empire, and the Australian company Orpheus, have achieved the same or a similar status. But the 301 is also unique insofar as its desirability and value, outstripping the others, have recently increased exponentially.
A couple years ago I was thinking about getting a Garrard. Both the 301 and the 401 were available in refurbished form for about a grand. I decided on the 401 because I liked its austere styling that reminded me of the form-follows-function philosophy of the Bauhaus movement. There were also suggestions that, although there wasn’t much in it, the 401 was the better performer. I ended up buying a 401 from Loricraft in England, who supplied a plinth as well. The Loricraft plinth has a separate wooden top plate that holds the turntable chassis. This structure rests on four squash balls seated on protrusions on the insides of the plinth side walls. Although this arrangement defeats rumble, I found that the squash balls sagged, so I replaced them with solid sorbothane spheres. Terry from Loricraft drilled out the wooden top plate to accommodate a 12-inch arm from Design Build Listen, and with the arm installed, I was – and I still am – very pleased with the 401’s performance.
In the meantime, though, something happened with the 301. It is now impossible to buy one in the worst condition imaginable for less than two grand, while fully restored examples start at around five. Why this has occurred cannot be a matter of performance because the 301 is now many times more expensive than the 401 which is, if anything, better. And based on my own listening experience, I’m not sure that either of the Garrards offers superior performance to a refurbished Lenco. But a Lenco chassis can be picked up for 400 bucks, which means that a fully restored unit with a new plinth and a high-quality arm-and-cartridge combination may well cost less than a ‘basket-case’ Garrard 301 in chassis-only form.
I think the recent spike in the price of the 301 can be attributed to its venerable age and its looks. These two factors overlap because the 301’s rugged yet fussy-looking controls and its baked enamel or ‘Hammertone’ finish scream ‘vintage’. Simply put, its appeal seems to lie in it looking both archaic and attractive at the same time. In fact, the 301 ticks many of the boxes associated with the currently fashionable steampunk aesthetic, while at the same time possessing a gravitas that makes the steampunk thing seem effete and phony.
The Garrard 301 is, then, unique in its voguish desirability. And it is this attribute that has made it ‘new’, as stated on the cover of Stereophile. The magazine’s cover story describes how tonearm and, more recently, turntable manufacturer SME have acquired the rights to Garrard products, in the process buying out Loricraft. The ‘new’ Garrard 301 is made by SME using a mix of restored equipment, new-old-stock items, and some newly manufactured parts. It comes in a wooden plinth that appears to be made according to Loricraft principles and a genuinely new, though old-looking, SME arm. It’s only available as a package, and the package costs over US25 grand.
The Stereophile reviewer praised the ‘new’ 301’s performance, but felt that as a package including the plinth, it was overpriced. The reviewer was right to point out that other more exotic after-market plinths are available for the 301, and that there are several highly regarded Garrard restoration services. He also hinted that many, if not all, combinations of these goods and services would fall well below the price of the ‘new’ SME 301. But although the current cost of any old 301 perhaps makes it difficult to say that the ‘new’ Garrard is overpriced in an absolute sense, 25 thousand bucks or more is still a lot of money to pay for a turntable. And it is a hell of a lot of money to pay for a retro turntable.
The Roman poet Catullus summed up the contradictory nature of romantic infatuation with the expression odi et amo, which means ‘I hate and (at the same time) I love’. This oxymoronic sentiment captures my feelings for the ‘new’ Garrard 301. I love the 301, and I love that one of the much-loved icons of the retro-hi-fi movement has achieved such a profile. But the retro impulse is all about passion and value for money; it is the antithesis of ostentation and commercialism. So I hate that the price of the ‘new’ 301 will have taken it into status-symbol land, and I can’t help feeling that when retro hi-fi becomes a consumerist status symbol, we are faced with a disconcerting contradiction.
Are contradictions necessarily a bad thing? Not everyone has thought so. The influential philosopher GWF Hegel, notably, felt that conceptual oppositions are the means by which progress occurs. Each historical epoch, he believed, possesses its own thesis and antithesis, and through a dialectical relationship, these are resolved into a synthesis that brings the next epoch into being. History is thus a process of resolving contradictions, an overcoming of the oxymoronic. Along these lines, perhaps hi-fi theses and antitheses such as looks versus performance, status versus value, and new versus old have been synthesised and overcome in the SME Garrard. Is the new-old Garrard therefore a good thing? Does it represent progress?
The answer is, at best, a definite maybe; and even if I were convinced that the SME 301 is a synthesis rather than a contradiction, I’d still be in two minds as to whether it is a successful or even an admirable one. For it is possible that a different approach to the new-old thing might not only be much cheaper, but also lead to better results. It strikes me that Peter Reinders’ PTP products are a case in point. PTP turntables have platters, idler wheels, and reconditioned motors from old Lenco turntables, but the chassis top plate is a new design and the plinth is made from a modern synthetic material. Although the cognoscenti know (and like) that there are Lenco bits in there, the turntables don’t look like Lencos because they’re not trying to be Lencos. In contrast with these PTP products, however, the SME 301 strikes me as a ‘synthesis’ that neither resolves contradictions, nor takes us to where hi-fi should be going. Like all ‘statement’ products, it is the antithesis of ‘real’ hi-fi. In other words, the new-old 301 is, and will remain, an oxymoron. And there’s surely a clue within the word ‘oxymoron’ as to who would part with 25 grand to buy one.
Dr Walter Kudrycz
