I have been an early adopter of the cd. As a student I bought my first CD-player, a Philips CD-104; Built like a tank, 14-bit and it still works. The reasons to switch to CDs were simpel then: CD was high-tech, lower noise, no cracks/ticks and long-play. Over the last years we found out that digital in itself is not a label for quality and especially in the early 80's the first CD recordings were not all that great compared to LPs. Also, there have been significant developments/innovations in turntable design. Not only do they sound much better than 20 years ago, they look 20 years better.
Early in 2001 I visited Henk of Audioselectief in NL who would make me a pair of speaker cables. In
his shop a combination of Marantz equipment was playing and I liked the sound.
Since I have the same cdplayer (CD-17mk2) I shared my thoughts. His reaction
was something like: Yeah it's not bad at all, almost as good as a turntable
but that sounds better of-course.
Over the following months I listened to several turntables and was surprised about the sound of records. Much to my surprise vinyl was not dead at all. I had at that time an old Philips record player and that one was clearly not much of a comparison. So after a while I decided I wanted to buy my 'last' turntable and it better be good. My wife and I listen to music a lot and share the same tast for music and she supported my plans. The only constraint she gave me was that the turntable had to be good-looking too.
Henk was so friendly to borrow me a Clearaudio Champion to try at home. Within a few days we were convinced and ordered our own Champion (transparent).
The Clearaudio Champion is a turntable made
of Acrylic. This material has very good sonic characteristics, making the turntable
free from resonances. The Champion is available in black and transparent Acrylic
(I own the transparent one, but do not yet have pictures
of that one available). The Champion is a belt-drive turntable, the motor is
free-standing in a hole in the back-left corner of the base. Standard (in NL)
the Champion comes with a RB-250 arm (Rega OEM) and an Ortofon OMT-5 cartridge.
As upgrading an interlink and arm at a later moment is both more costly and a lot of work, we decided to order our Champion with a RB-300 arm and the better Quint interlink immediately. Since I did not have a good feel for the cartridge anyway, we decided for the standard cartridge at least initially.
The standard cartridge delivered with the Clearaudio Champion is an Ortofon OMT-5. This cartridge does not meet the standards of the champion, and although not a bad cartridge for the money, it should be replaced with something better as soon as possible.
One thing I learned about turntables those last
months: The principle might me 
simple, but getting the most out of the arm-cartridge combination is an
art. Also not every combination of arm and cartridge will be a perfect match.
Since I do not have the time (and money) to
try every combination myself, do not wish to join the group of audiophiles that
are always in search of the next piece of equipment, I decided I needed an expert
here. Fortunately, Henk is not only an expert in tuning turntables but he also
listened to many arm-cartridge combinations and is able to advice such a combination
based on your turntable, musical taste and budget (of-course budget is always
the parameter suffering in this equation).
I did it again. In a moment of weakness I bought another Thorens for a little more than Hfl 100,- This one was in original condition and had been on the attick of the first owner for more than 15 years. As the family wanted to move to another town, the Thorens had to leave.
The arm is the TP-16 type with anti-skating done by little weights. Anyway, let's see whether I can find a picture of this turntable ...
(I think this a TD160, but it;s the closest I can find for the moment)
I had another Thorens, model TD-166mk2 fo a
while, but sold it 
to another member of the forum. I kept this one since it offers good possibilities
for tuning and tweaking and the head is very well suited for a high-output MC
cartridge.
Readers in Dutch may want to read the story about getting this TD-166 in better shape, or use it as a guide when buying a second-hand TD-166 themselves (Follow this link please).
Here are the links to some of the manufacturers like:
Interesting sites with technical background are:
© Maarten, last updated August 4, 2001