MakeMineVinyl
Major Contributor
I have used either AR turntables with Shure V15 cartridge in the earliest days (with a Rabco arm thrown in there for awhile) or a Thorens TD-125 MKII with SME 3009 arm and V15 or other similar cartridges from the early 70s onward to the present day, and I've always treated my records extremely well. Things I own generally last forever because I take good care of them and they still work as-new.I'm gonna guess that you have never have played LPs on substandard equipment. I went through something like 10 copies of Stokowski's Phase 4 recording of Beethoven's 9th with the LSO. Wore them out, they became unplayable. You'll find tons of discs like that, just plain worn out, in the $1 bins of thrift stores. Record wear is a thing. Lots of defenders of the LP format claim they don't experience record wear, I'm sure there are some people that know how to handle LPs to prevent wear. But that's not most people. Record wear was [and for some people still is] a real issue. It's real hard to damage a CD like that. I've had many more LPs arrive damaged or develop damage than CDs. I've encountered very few CDs suffering from disc rot. I've encountered many LPs that came out of the wrapper warped or off-center. Have yet to encounter any off-center or warped CDs.
Except for some CDs which fail due to rot no matter how well they are taken car of..... The same can be said of more than a couple CD players whose lasers have worn out, and due to parts unobtanium issues are a lost cause. On the other hand, I can easily today buy a new turntable, arm and cartridge - or vacuum tubes for that matter.