The Miracord turntable

A friend of mine insists that his 1970's Miracord/Realistic turntable is one of the best ones ever made in that decade, and would give even today's turntables a run for their money. His has the three-speed settings that I had though indicated an obsolete piece of turntable equipment. What was it that makes the Miracord superior, the kind of stylus designed for it?

 

MMm.. three speeds usually means Idler Wheel drive, and that equals noise and rumblings unless very good engineering is involved.

Better than the current $99-150 tables in Best Buy? Probably. So is any old 70's/80's solid table from Technics, Pioneer, Sony, Denon, Dual... The Miracord I have is pretty good, but not as well made as the similar Dual models. Both these are from Germany. There are some higher end models, but these were direct or belt drive and wouldn't have been three speeds.

 

I don't know about the 70's model you're asking about. Growing up, we had a mid-60'a Benjamin Miracord Model 10 turntable with what I recall was an ELAC studio tonearm from West Germany. It had four speeds and was a record changer as well. It had chrome push buttons about the size of a dime in circumference and about 1/2 inches tall which determined how far the arm was cast over the table, which could also be executed manually.

The Beatles colorful "Help/I'm Down" 45, contrasted with the black and white "Meet the Beatles" Lp, as well as "The Monkees" and "More of the Monkees," plus lots of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald records were in heavy rotation during this early period.

Here's a picture of the same or similar model from a famous forum member (who, I believe, also had it hooked up to vintage Sherwood tube amplification, as did we -- although ours was a receiver) then into Jenson three-way speakers. That was the neighborhood's reference system. Lots of good memories of that system as my gateway into high fidelity.

 

I think the Miracord TT's were kind of mid-fi, price wise. I guess the 50 and 770 were their top models. My first good TT was an Elac Miracord, about 1971. I'm sure it wasn't a 50H. I paid about $250 and I think it had an Elac cart. That and a Marantz 1060 and speaker cabinets that I made myself, a three way system.
I think the 50H and 760 were almost identical except for the motor. The 50H with a hysteresis motor and the 760 with a nonsynchronous design.

 

Miracord and P/E slugged it out in the same market niche as the Dual 12xx series, but I gather not as successfully; I think on the whole they all may have been a bit of a cut above contemporaneous Garrard. If I'm remembering correctly, Miracord had a plunger-actuated lock built into the turntable to keep the arm from descending unless a record was on the platter, the idea being to prevent inadvertent damage to the stylus. Nowadays, I think parts for the Miracord and P/E are rather hard to come by; Duals can still be serviced fairly readily. My personal experience with Miracord is limited to having bought one that didn't work at a garage sale once, only to discover that I couldn't get it serviced.

 

I was fortunate enough to pick up a Miracord 50H-II for $25 at a flea market. Because it was cosmetically imperfect (only missing the badge), he decided to let it go cheap. Turns out, it still sounds great, with very little bearing/idler noise whatsoever(I checked and lubed all the bearings, just to be sure). Definitely way better than many of the Japanese plastic turntables that flooded the market in the later 70s and beyond. I decided to use it as my dedicated 78rpm turntable, with a Shure M97 Era IV cartridge and original genuine N978E stylus. It plays LPs and 45s nicely, too (with the N97HE stylus). Definitely a great combination! ....and a great price, too!