Garrard 301 / 401 Transcription Turntable

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (October 2007)

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (October 2007)

Before there were workhorse direct-drive turntables in clubs, and belt-drive turntables on audiophile racks, the standard mechanism for playing an Lp record was called the Idler drive, a system utilizing an intermediate wheel in a capstan arrangement, in closely-coupled contact with the edge of the platter.

Unlike the beltdrive, which separates motor and platter via a compliant belt, and direct-drive, which uses a low-speed direct-current motor, Idler drive most often used a high speed circa-1600-rpm alternating-current motor engaged to an intermediate, or Idler wheel, to rotate the platter. Transcription turntables must have speed accuracy and wow and flutter specifications that met professional broadcasting standards.

Starting production in 1953, the first Garrard transcription turntable that supported all extant commercial playback formats, 33, 45, 78 rpm records, was called the Garrard 301. The later 401 was nearly identical mechanically, but with an exterior redesigned for the swinging sixties. Both models were utilized by the BBC and in commercial radio stations, mostly in Europe; the 301and to a lesser extent the 401 were also exported around the world. The 401 was produced until 1976.

In an unlikely exchange of technologies, by the early eighties notions of 'modern' and 'antiquated' were both being revisited-- as the Compact Disc was being introduced in the West by the consortium of Sony and Philips, small groups of audio enthusiasts in Japan and also in France were narrowing their sights to investigate what might be called the ‘overlooked’ technologies of the fifties, notably vacuum-tube amplification and Idler-drive Lp playback amongst others.

Content to forego Cd marketing's "perfect sound forever" scheme, these groups were by any measure a contrarian micro-movement, even in audiophile circles, but they kept acquiring new members. They would maintain they were after a more purist sound, untouched by what they saw the as the market’s misleading over-reliance on impressive but ever-more-unrealistic specifications, and needless, flashy features. Analog sound, unaltered by digital sampling & reconstruction on the source side, and without the shifted harmonics inherent in much transistor amplification of the time, would be their goal. As reliable, well-built idler machines, the Garrard 301/401 models became the source component of choice for what was loosely labelled the ‘Ultra-Fi’ resurgence, guided by French audio critic Jean Hiraga and others, in Europe and Japan.

Long out of production, Garrard 301 and 401 models today are sold on the used market for as much as ten to twenty times their original cost. Even though Lp Records themselves are several bygone formats older by now, they are still produced in late 2007 and they continue to intrigue new generations with their warm and coherent sound quality.^{[neutrality disputed]}