Of course, being me, I *should* be shouting Rega from the rooftops and pushing HiFi Dave as the seller, since he loves dealing with AOS members, but I have to say the techie does have very many friends around these parts and offers great pitch stability as well as silent backgrounds in bass frequencies if it's properly isolated, something the *cheaper* pro-jects may have difficulty with, even after all the drive revisions to the basic models in fairly recent times. Loads of parts are available for the techie still and the mk5 tonearm did apparently offer tonearm refinements over earlier versions. This is of course, long before we start on the upgrade journey which is so well documented here.

As for the other 1970's DD decks, few if any spares are available now and condition must be paramount, although as said above, prices are getting silly on the better known and better performing ones...

Rega? well, important spares can still be got for the original Planet model from forty years ago I believe and tonearm apart, the Planar models all use(d) bits available now, pretty well, so bearings, platters and motors should be easily replaceable if necessary. I believe someone found the (video machine derived?) replacement toothed bias belt for the R200 arm as well, although they wanted a good price for them - maybe AO's Johnnie has more info here.

ALL these decks need careful siting, older Rega's especially if bass quality and feedback of any sort is to be avoided. Good luck and if the final choice is either Techie or Rega, both brands are well served with setting up and tweaking experts here

Hope I've been fair to both main brands above..