They refurbish old 301s and 401s for the discerning customers of today. The two premier companies are Loricraft, who are based in England, and Shindo, who are based in Japan. Garrard turntables are cult icons that are still being refurbished today. The Garrard 401 was produced in 1965 to replace the 401 (it never quite achieved this feat, according to the opinions of some). After production ceased during World War II, the Garrard 301 was invented in 1954 and hailed as a triumph of engineering. Sales picked up as technology did during the 1930s, with the invention of amplifiers helping things move along at a nice pace. In the late 1920s, Garrard began producing electric motors and by 1930, their very first complete gramaphone. Garrard initially started manufactured spring wound motors for a growing gramophone industry, which were great successes due to their comparative silence to other options of the era. Following the war, the Garrard Engineering and Manufacturing Company was set up with view to producing consumer products in a post-war era. They were a company that were requested to manufacture range finders for the First World War. Garrard and Company was the first iteration of the company that would go on to manufacture Garrard turntables.
#GARRARD ZERO 100 TURNTABLE VALUE SERIES#
The 301 and 401 are not dissimilar to 1200 series Dual turntables in that they are sturdy, well built idler drive turntables.
Other Garrard turntables are worthwhile if found in good working order, but unless you have experience restoring vintage turntables, the cost of a restoration will outweigh the benefits a good Garrard can provide. These are the Garrard 301 and Garrard 401. There’s no point ending up with a mediocre table when you could have spent a hundred dollars more and got a nice entry level audiophile turntable.Ī couple of Garrard turntables have been elevated to cult status. While I hesitate to call them junk, there are many Garrard turntables that are not worth the pain of restoring them. Garrard turntables at the time were not as well regarded as say, the Linn LP12s or the Pink Triangles, but their best turntables were regarded as excellent affordable options. They were a relatively unexciting company, producing decent turntables for the masses for many years.
Two reviews from Hifi-World ( one, two) and one from turntables are a UK based manufacturer. 25 years after the fact :)Įven if a 501 is too much money for most who'd love to use one daily, be sure to thoroughly visit Loricraft's website as it does show what live-audio-made-by-real-people can be like, unlike the yearly chip swapping most brands have now fallen into. Since 1998 sustained by Loricraft in the UK, who managed to buy the rights back from the brazilian Gradiente to re-use the glorious name and even produce a successor to the 401. So what happened during the 1970s' painstaking and vivid research and the 1980s over-engineering madness if 1960s designs still rule ? I wonder ! The japanese thus preceded us in re-discovering what we made. The 401 belongs to that family of hi-fi objects which japanese audiophiles were buying for peanuts while we were looking elsewhere for ultra-tech and feature-packed items. It would've been interesting to observe in retrospect, though ! Interestingly, perhaps luckily, the 401 didn't see visually alternate versions throughout its long life : no "disco shine " version, "faux diamond", "faux wood" or 24k gold-plated with backlit ruby inserts. The 401 is a pleasure to look at, too, with more than one similarity with JBL's contemporary amps - 1960s design at its very best.
Like a few other "oldies", such as the Thorens TD-124, the Quad ESL57, the Marantz Model 8B or Garrard's earlier 301, the 401 still is going strong.
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