I'm slowly catching up. I really disagree with the watch/turntable analogy. A casio will keep as good of time as a Rolex. A $50 turntable will NOT retrieve the same amount of information from the grooves as a $3000 turntable. You own a Rolex for status, an admiration for its build, its fit and finish, whatever..but its ultimate role as a timepiece is accomplished just as well by your cellphone. That is not the case in turntables. An expensive turntable accomplishes its main task, playing records, better, and justifies its price through better performance.
There are good deals to be had by buying a turntable that was built when the economics of scale were more in favor of a manufacturer covering their costs with a larger sales volume. But the current niche market that turntables fall in has made room for some really no-nonsense designs that might not have made it when turntables were being bought by the masses. Everybody doesn't need an SME turntable and they might not ever have been made in mass quantities...they would have been hugely expensive even in the '70s. But back to the OP, to say that a $50 sony is as good is simply delusional. There are comments that can be debated, and there are comments that can be dismissed. There is no debating that fact. It is delusional, or the result of bad hearing, or a complete lack of experience with what is being compared. And that happens all the time. People in audio have this innate ability to somehow 'imagine' what something will sound like and dismiss it, because of something they assume instead of something they actually have heard.
