I actually owned an ST-7 in 1975 and enjoyed it immensely, but its complication led to frustration and I passed it on to another owner.
By 1975, the acquired brand was manufacturing the ST-7, which was embraced momentarily by its dealer network. These prices weren’t out of line by any means, considering that a garden-variety belt-drive turntable at the time sold in the vicinity of $115.Įven though Rabco was reasonably successful, the company eventually sold out to Harman Kardon. At the time, the ST-4 retailed for $159, while the more sophisticated SL-8E retailed for $169. Rabco even marketed a complete linear-tracking turntable in the form of its ST-4 model. These arms found their way onto many of the revered turntables of the early 1970s, like the Thorens TD-125 and Technics SL-1100. Somehow, Rabco figured out a way to make these arms relatively reliable, despite their mechanical complication (i.e. As valiant an attempt as the Marantz was, it was doomed to fail as a successful business venture, due to various mechanical problems.Įnter Rabco, the Maryland-based manufacturer of the now-famous SL-8 and SL-8E tangential-tracking tonearms. However, it wasn’t until the mid-1960s that a somewhat commercially viable tangential-tracking turntable, the Marantz SLT-12, became available to the buying public. Companies like Rek-O-Kut, Ortho-Sonic and Burne-Jones had fielded products of this nature as early as the mid-1950s.
Tangential arms were nothing new at the time. It and its sibling ST-6 and ST-8 models introduced linear tracking, or tangential tracking, to a wide audience of music lovers seeking to extract that little bit of extra magic from the record grooves. Introduced in the mid 1970s and selling in fairly high numbers, the ST-7 was a brilliant product, which eventually crashed and burned because of reliability issues and a changing marketplace.
Welcome to Kludgeville, aka the H/K Rabco ST-7 linear-tracking turntable.
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