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Vintage Czech Turntables - recommendations please!

O

obnyc

New Member
Hi there,

I'm heading to Prague in early July and have heard good things about their TT heritage...

My budget would be between $500 and $1000USD

Any ideas on what make or model to look out for?

Any suggestions much appreciated!

Thanks
 
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The floppy arm NAD was Czech, I believe. More appealling, perhaps are the Kuzma arms and tables (if my memory that they made tables is correct).
 
obnyc said:
Hi there,

I'm heading to Prague in early July and have heard good things about their TT heritage...

My budget would be between $500 and $1000USD

Any ideas on what make or model to look out for?

Any suggestions much appreciated!

Thanks
Click to expand...


Order in advance for an USA/North American 117 volt, 60 Hz model. :cool:
 
I have a Made In Czech Republic Pro-Ject 1.1. Bought it in 1998, is that considered vintage?
 
I have the NAD 5120 with the floppy arm and really like it. Imagine this would fall WELL below your budget with all that left over cash sitting around to spend on expanding your vinyl collection!!!!!
 
Make sure you check it out. Especially if they won't accept a cheque.
 
It was a flat arm made of circuit board material. The idea was that rather than trying to get rid of the resonances that are inherent in metal tubes, a floppy but self damping piece of fiberglass would mostly bend up and down and that could be easily damped by the dashpot in the arm. It worked well, sort of, maybe. I believe really you just got a different set of problems. That wasn't the only unusual think about the table, which also had a platter made of very thin metal with a very thick heavy rubber mat/circumferential ring that damped the platter and provided rotational mass.
In a moment of audio sobriety, I didn't buy the one I saw at a tag sale. Drat.
 
Oh -- I have no idea of Kuzma pricing, and my impression was that the OP wasn't limiting himself to new tables since he was interested in 'heritage'. I had supposed that they might be affordable used, but not based on any actual experience.
 
If you're looking for Czech vintage audio heritage, them it's definitely Tesla. (And yes the productiowasn of turntables was resurrected decade ago and formed the basis of now known Pro-Ject). They produced many models of turntables but only few are worth mentioning.
NAD 5120 was made by Tesla, but mostly as an export article and is quite a rare find locally.
There were few models: NC440, NC450, NC452 and NC500, all of them having nice tonearm P1101. Pricewise you are looking at max ~250 dollars for fully restored one, but you can find some for less than 80 bucks (in a need of service). There are no shops in Prague specializing on these vintage turntables, very rarely I have seen some in vinyl shops (I live here). But they are easy to find on online flea markets.

One more turntable worth mentioning and real gem, is AU/RA with models G6, G7 and cheaper G1 - all with tangential tonearm. Very collectable and also very rare.
 
By the way, Kuzma is made in Slovenia. Great turntable maker an even though they are sold also in Czech Republic and Slovakia, they aren't produced here.

Greetings from Prague, Rado
 
Apologies for the mistake. In my defense, I was thinking back to their early arms, which were made before all the political changes.
 
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