I think you used the right phrase "looking through rose colored glasses" at the vintage gear.
We see what we want to see when we do that, not necessarily what's actually there.
@Verdinut also hit it on the head: today's stuff is by and large of better quality than old stuff.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing. But to have genuine nostalgia one has to have actually lived through a time period.
Most of the folks who lived through the era of early audio don't have a desire to go back.
But a lot of young people who never lived through it have this idea of nostalgia for things they never lived through.
Hence the nostalgia is much more wistful and idealistic than the reality often was.
But, we don't need to argue or bludgeon the OP. If he wishes to pine for the old days, go ahead and enjoy the trip.
There is an evolutionary survival of the fittest in all of this. There is the strong tendency of the best of older gear to survive. There has always been lots of junk around, but it tends to be long gone.
There are still lots of Garrard 301 and 401 turntables around, because not only are they really good turntables, but the engineering and build quality were of the highest order. There were many, many times more junk BSR turntables produced. But where are they now? I would bet there are more Garrard 301 turntables around that the junk BSR auto changers.
Quad products are another example. The proportion of surviving production is high, because Peter Walker was a reliability fanatic. It is also really good equipment and in the analog domain as good and better than most produced now. There are many others of that era now gone. His FM4 FM tuner was one of the best, if not the best ever produced, and so sort after if you still want quality FM reproduction.
Studer/Revox is another case in point, with superb performance and build quality.
There is also the curios and the museum aspect. Take dbx LPs and the decoders. That format can compete with any digital format on any level apart from convenience. Items like that are really of historical/museum interest. But my rig is cutting edge and museum by design.
I have been playing of late the superbly played and recorded LPs of the Haydn String quartets played by the Beaux Arts Trio on the Philips label.
I have been playing them on my Garrard 301 with the Decca pro arm and H4E head, via my Quad 22 tube preamp. The disc surfaces are silent and the sound magnificent in large part due to the excellence of the recordings. However the sound is so good, detailed and delegate, that you can wonder if we have improved.
The turntable is 60 years old the preamp 55 years old and the Decca arm and head 52 year old. None of those units under half a century old, and yet the absolute equal of anything now, given a recording of that quality. Now however that level of audio quality is far more easily accessible
There is gear around that is beautifully made and engineered today, but the price gap between that and junk has widened enormously.
