Indoctrinated as we are to worship belt-drive turntables above all others, it's hard for many to accept that - even today - there are idler-drive decks that can match the best of the later, succeeding formats. In the early years of hi-fi, before the belt-drive conquered all, the primary drive method was an idler wheel rubbing against the inside rim of the platter. With hindsight, all we can imagine is rumble and motor-noise being transmitted through the system. But, as Garrard 301/401 owners know, and the new Loricrafts prove, it just ain't so.

Garrard, however, didn't have it all its own way back in high-end audio's first decade. In 1957, the Swiss firm Thorens launched a turntable that, to this day, is the classic Garrard's main rival among collectors, a model that faces off against the 301/401 in the way that Mercedes-Benz fights BMW, or Pepsi challenges Coke. And before the hate mail arrives from around the globe, yes, I know about Weathers, Rek-O-Kut, Lenco, Connoisseur, Collaro and myriad other great turntables of the era, but the global consensus is that the 301/401's only real rival was the Thorens TD124. What makes the TD124 doubly important - aside from it bettering the Garrard in nearly every way, from build quality to sound to looks - is that it was a harbinger of things to come.

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Oops - there it is. I've said it. If you Google 'THD124', you'll find close to 10,000 sites, the best of which will tell you how to rebuild one from the ground up, while others will tell you how to modify them (or not, depending on your purism). But all will argue that the TD124 is a deck worth coveting. Forced to choose between the Garrard and the Thorens, I'd opt for the TD124 every time. And nearly every serious collector I know who's owned mint examples of both seems to agree. So please, leave your xenophobia at the door, and accept that the TD124 was more sophisticated, better assembled, with higher quality parts, and in possession of a key feature that distanced it from its idler-driven contemporaries: a belt.

Thorens cleverly used a belt to drive the TD124's idler wheel, the turntable thus going part of the way to providing the isolation so cherished by belt-drive obsessives. It provided a smoothness, a 'silence', a sense of coherence that the belt-less idler drives couldn't quite attain. [Note, however, that there are cults in audio even for pure direct-drive decks such as the Kenwood/Trio L-07D and the big Technicses. It's not what does the driving; it's how the whole package works. Lord knows there are enough truly awful-sounding belt-drives out there; conversely, anyone who dismisses an L-07D has either never heard one, or is simply a completely prejudiced moron.]