The single-play turntables only a great changer company could have made.
Garrard Zero 100SB, $209.95
Garrard's new single-play turntables are so advance in their solution of basic engineering problems that only a leading manufacturer of automatic changers (yes, changers) could have produced them.
This may sound paradoxical to the partisans of single play, but it's a perfectly realistic view of the situation. The truth is that it's easier to make a single-play turntable that works (never mind outstanding performance for the moment) than a record changer that works.
The very qualities that make the single-play turn table the preferred choice of certain users--straightforwardness of design, lots of room for relatively few parts, fewer critical functions, etc.--also permit an unsophisticated maker to come up more easily with an acceptable model. Take a heavy platter and a strong motor, connect them with a belt... you get the picture.
As a result, there are quite a few nice, big, shiny and expensive single-play turntables of respectable performance in the stores today.
A thoroughbred single-play automatic is another matter.
We're talking about a turntable' that gives you not only state-of-the-art. performance in terms of rumble, wow, flutter, tracking and soon, but also the utmost in convenience, childproof and guest-proof automation, pleasant handling, efficient use of space, balanced good looks and, above all, value per dollar.
Here we're back on the home grounds of the changer maker. He alone knows how to coordinate a lot of different turntable functions and niggling little design problems without wasted motions, space and expenditures. The kind of thing Garrard is the acknowledged master of.
No other proof of this argument is needed than a close look at the new Garrard Zero 100SB and 86SB.
Yes, they have heavy, die-cast, dynamically balanced platters. Yes, they have belt drive. Yes, they have-64dB rumble (DIN B Standard). And the Zero 100SB has Garrard's unique Zero Tracking Error Tonearm, the first and only arm to eliminate even the slightest amount of tracking error in an automatic turntable.
But that's not the whole story.
What gives these turntables the final edge over other single-play designs is the way they're automated.
Both are fully automatic in the strictest sense of the term. Your hand need never touch the tonearm. The arm indexes at the beginning of the record, returns to the arm rest at the end of the record and shuts off the motor, all by itself. The stylus can't flop around in the lead-out groove.
There are also other subtle little features like the ingeniously hinged dust cover (it can be lifted and removed--even on a narrow shelf), the integrated low-profile teak base, the exclusive automatic record counter (in the Zero 100SB only) and the finger-tab control panel. Plus one very unsubtle feature. The price.
Garrard, Dept. G. 7 , 100 Commercial Street, Plainview, N.Y. 11803.
Garrard -- Div. of Plessey Consumer Products
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(High Fidelity, Jul. 1975)
Also see:
Dual 1209 turntable (ad)
Sansui SR-212 automatic return turntable (ad, Apr. 1975)