David Price compares four ways of getting the best sound per pound, by buying a second-hand source from the back pages of this very magazine.

ARISTON RD40SL £125

There are literally millions of old turntables lying around in people's spare rooms, lofts, garages, basements and sheds - all going for pennies, but if you're after a respected British design you'll have to fork out at least £100 for something in decent condition. 

Ariston's RD40 was one of the many 'nearly men' of the early eighties vinyl scene. It was a fine piece of kit, but somehow failed to capture the imagination of journalists and buyers alike. Nothing wrong with that, because you can pay much more for a trendy deck that's only half as good as this. 

An ëold skoolí suspended subchassis design, there's nothing remarkable about it at all - anyone who's ever seen a Thorens TD160 will find nothing new here. The joy of the Ariston is that it cost over £200 in 1984 (a lot of money) and as a consequence is built very sturdily.
Not as good as an LP12, but not that far off either. 

This improved SL model comes complete with a thick, correctly shaped platter mat and a dinky little alloy record clamp. 

The arm often fitted was Linn's very first Basik -  a popular partner for decks such as the Ariston, Thorens TD160, Heybrook TT2 and STD 305S. It's a Japanese built affair with many trademark Audio Technica signs - although Linn never stated that this is where the Basik was sourced, I'd bet money on it! This is no bad thing, because you get a decently finished, nicely aligned middle of the road S-shaped tonearm which sounds surprisingly musical. 

Because LVVs are objects of derision to the hi-fi cognescenti, they're cheap as muck and therefore a fine starter arm. The origin Linn Basik cartridge (reputedly an Audio Technica AT93) was fitted, but in the interests of my record collection this was junked in favour of a shiny new AT110E (£25). 

To ears that spend far too much time listening to CD these days, this deck sounded incredibly warm and powerful. Bass was fat and full (incredibly so, compared to CD!), midband clean with impressive depth perspective and treble silky and deliciously smooth. Properly set up and aligned, the Ariston gave a more natural, organic sound than practically any CD player I've ever heard. It was truly big hearted and involving, and just seemed to connect on an emotional level in a way that no digital audio can. 

The downside was its slightly compressed dynamics (thanks to the LVV methinks), vague imaging and loose, spongy and overblown bass. So if it's classical music you love then look you'll probably want to look elsewhere, but with jazz and rock this was dynamite. Not brilliant in absolute 'hi-fi' terms then, but if it's music you're into then a well preserved turntable is incredible value right now.

These days, it's pretty common knowledge that Pioneer is one of DVD's most passionate proponents. The company dedicates much of its creative energies - not to mention its R&D budget - into the new format. Back in the seventies, Pioneer's heart was in cassette decks. The company produced a range of best selling designs - from budget, entry-level fare like the £100 CT-F500 to massive behemoths such as the £400 CT-F1250. All shared superb construction quality and were impressively well set up.

The CT-F950 you see here occupied the upper echelons of Pioneer's range in 1980, selling for around £250 (which was about the same as a Linn LP12). With hindsight could be said to offer the best of both worlds - it has the superb build of all Pioneer's late seventies products (possible thanks to the weakness of the Yen at that time), yet was just about modern enough to feature metal tape compatibility. This was an important leap for Philips once all-conquering Compact Cassette format - allowing far high levels and crisper high frequencies. 

At the time this machine was made, the British hi-fi press largely overlooked the superb sonic performance afforded by the high end cassette decks of the day. It was Nakamichi, more than any other company, which proved how good pre-recorded cassette decks could sound - but the likes of Pioneer took up the gauntlet and produced some beautifully made dual capstan, three motor transports, such as the one fitted to the CTF-950.

Slot in a tape, lightly touch PLAY button and there's a quiet solenoid click before the reels start spooling. The ridiculously bright fluorescent bar graph meters start darting up and down the wide scale, and you're in business. Although seventies pre-recorded cassettes aren't much to shout about, eighties and nineties ones are far better and the Pioneer is capable of quiet surprising fidelity. 

The Sendust heads take ages to wear out (beware decks with Permalloy heads - these suffer severe HF droop after a few years) and offer surprisingly sweet and extended highs. Bass is full and powerful - if not the tautest around and there's plenty of midband detail and even a half decent soundstage. 

In 2001, it's fascinating listening to high quality cassette decks. In today's CD-dominated world, they sound so obviously warm and coloured, yet thanks to their complete lack of digits, give an extremely fluid and listenable sound. You can hear a minute touch of pitch instability and wobble on piano notes, a slight 'cracking' of high frequencies, a bit of compression and even (that old enemy) hiss - but musically they're still no poor relation to a CD player. 

Best of all, both cassette decks and pre-recorded cassettes are absolutely dirt cheap these days. This deck cost £100, and I picked up some great titles (from Pink Floyd to Kate Bush) at Oxfam for 50p a go - can't argue with that! As well as Pioneers, look also for baby Nakamichis, top Aiwas, JVCs and Sonys for cheap thrills.

The first Compact Disc players arrived in 1982 and finally reached British punters a year later. The UK hi-fi press promptly split straight down the middle over the new formats relative merits relative to established superdecks of the day such as the Linn and Oracle. To the poor customer, it was a wall of confusion - some journalists celebrated CD uncritically, apparently ecstatic that it had banished all of analogue's traditional bugbears like hiss, wow and flutter. 

The result was that the first generation of silver disc spinners has become largely forgotten. Shame, because many of the very first players had a sound quite unlike any others that followed, and one that was - ironically - far more analogue and musical than most of today's high end esoterica. 

The Marantz CD54 you see here is practically a museum piece. Made in 1984, it's a late first generation design using Philips' exquisite CDM-1 Pro metal die-cast transport mechanism and the same company's Palaeolithic 14bit, 4 times oversampling DAC/filter package. Despite its midi size, the thing weighs a ton - evidence that the consumer electronics giants built their very first generation players to last. As they cost CD's 'early adopters' a packet, it was only right that they weren't plastic boxes full of air, I guess! 

Using it is a riot - it feels as clunky as the Pioneer cassette deck, but slower to respond! Press the Open button and a CD drawer the size and mass of the Clifton Suspension Bridge lumbers out to greet you. Put the disc in and press PLAY and you can go off and make brew before the music's started. When it does finally see it's way to reading the disc's table of contents, the digital time display starts (hurrah!) and the fun begins. 

Anyone who thinks big is better, and more bits and oversampling maketh a superior silver disc spinner will learn something playing this baby. It sounds incredibly analogue for something so self-avowedly digital - bass isn't far off the Sansui turntable in its warm and softness, and is barely any tighter either. 

The mid band doesn't have much in the way of level detail, but what instruments you do hear have a beautifully rich and sonorous texture. Treble is the biggest disappointment - what there is sweet and silky, but it sounds rather perfunctory. Interestingly though, it isn't harsh and painful as you'd expect from its meagre 14bit DAC - quite the reverse in fact, it's fluffy and vague and cloudy. 

The CD54 is an incredibly musical way of listening to digital discs - it's obviously a long way off the likes of even a good mid-range modern machine (i.e. Rega's Planet 2000) in many hi-fi respects like dynamics and detailing, but is still a hoot to listen to. 

The fact is that there are lots of machines still going that use this transport/DAC/digital filter combination - from Philips' original CD100 to its CD104B - and all are reasonably priced. If you can live without a remote, programming facilities and S/PDIF digital outputs, then they're well worth searching out. Likewise, pathological CD haters may just find them an acceptable way into the delights (?) of the digital disc!

For whatever reason, used tuners are hardly the sexiest bit of kit for hardened hi-fi nuts, and tend to be very cheap as a result. While you're struggling to get any sort of serviceable turntable, CD player or tape deck for under £100, there's a wide choice of weird and wonderful tuners.

The big issue here is analogue vs. synthesiser tuning - round about 1981 there was a mass migration away from big dials, knobs, levers and pulleys to fully digitally synthesised tuners, which famously 'locked on' target, never to drift off station again. The problem was that designers were on a steep learning curve with the new technology, the result being that the first examples, such as the one you see here, had far from perfect sonics. 

This Sony ST-J60 is one of the sleekest and most ergonomically successful hi-fi tuners I've ever used. It is beautifully built inside and out, with a thick but tasteful brushed aluminium front panel with a long sleeve of Perspex inset. The switches, buttons and legends wouldn't look out of place on an S-class Mercedes, and are a joy to use. 

You can ever slide in little labels behind the presets to denote the station you've chosen. The signal strength doubles up as a multipath indicator, and the fluorescent tuning display dims automatically in low light. Wonderful stuff - but it's a shame about the sound. Lightweight, coarse and mushy, sonically it's a million miles behind the high end analogue tuners just three years previous. 

This one cost £60 - which still makes it brilliant value for a once top of range model - but if you do anything more than casual listening and want a digital then you'd do far better with a NAD 4130, Creek T40 or Denon TU260 for under £100. 

As far as analogue radios are concerned, there a welter of late seventies analogue NADs, Pioneers, Sonys and Trios going for a song, all of which sound surprisingly open and airy. In this case however, budget for a decent aerial - the old wet string won't work well with these less sensitive designs.