Well I have a huge laundry list of gear that hes been dependable for over half a century, my Garrard 301 turntables for instance with the Decca ffss head and arm.
However I think first place has to go to my 70 year old JD Model A two cylinder tractor.
Here she is in the fall ready for winter and carrying a bucket full of wood down for the fireplace.
I have owned the tractor for 20 years of its long life. I was one year old when it left the Waterloo Iowa factory.
This tractor stats right away, first piston up and you hear that distinctive two cylinder sound with the 180 degree firing cycle. (The cylinder fire within a half revolution). It goes out in all weathers and moves prodigious amounts of snow.
It built and graded the road. I was on her all afternoon grading the neighborhood roads for their first Spring grading, now the frost is out.
Prodigious amounts of torque and power even at low revs. The hydraulics are excellent, responsive and progressive. This allows for a really professional grade. The Powertrol hydraulics deserve their legendary reputation. They are also highly fuel efficient and won the Nebraska tractor fuel efficiency awards year after year.
Never once in my 20 years of ownership have a craved a newer tractor.
Anyone who has owned and or worked on those JD Waterloo series tractors, can not be anything but totally impressed with the build quality and superb workmanship.
I think they really do represent a high watermark in American manufacture.
Tractors of this era, in those long ago days there were many makes, fed the world in the dark days of WW II.
They kept food production up with the U-Boat losses. In Churchill's history of the WW II he writes that his greatest anxiety was starvation of the population. The Waterloo built (built from 1923 to 1960) JD 2 cylinder tractors paid their part and then some in saving civilization.
