Garrard Model 210
A four-speed automatic intermix changer that sold for $49 and was pitched, in the ads, as "the latest Garrard engineered and wired specifically for stereo."
Overview
The Model 210 is the workingman's Garrard of the late 1950s and early 1960s. It's a compact automatic changer, not a transcription-grade machine, and it was priced that way. Garrard's own period ads in the audio press called it a "New Deluxe Changer," a four-speed player that combined an automatic intermix changer with a single-play turntable and was "developed to meet and surpass today's stereophonic requirements." That's marketing copy, so read it as such. What the ads do establish is where the 210 sat in the lineup. It was well below the Laboratory Series Type A, which Garrard sold at $69.50, and below the Model 88 Mk II deluxe record changer. The company grouped all three in one comparison ad.
The "Deluxe Intermix Changer" label is the one to remember. An intermix changer lets a user stack records of mixed sizes, a 12-inch LP followed by a 7-inch single, say, and drops them correctly. That was a genuinely useful feature in a household that owned both LPs and 45s. The 210 was built to do that job at a modest price, and the period ads place it in that role rather than in the audiophile's listening room.
Contemporary coverage of the 210 is almost entirely advertising, not independent lab review. High Fidelity (January 1960, p.40) and Audio (December 1959, p.5) both ran the same Garrard spread announcing the 210 as a new four-speed player with automatic intermix and single-play capability. HiFi-Stereo (January 1960, p.4) carried the same announcement. Later in 1960, Audio (April 1960, p.5) was still running the 210 as a $49 unit, and High Fidelity (May 1960, p.34) placed it at "$40" in a later version of the same ad, so the price drifted downward as the model aged in the catalog. By High Fidelity (March 1961, p.30), the 210 was shown next to the Type A and the Model 88 Mk II as one of "Garrard's Three Stereo Automatics," with the 210 labeled the "Deluxe Intermix Changer." That three-way comparison is the clearest period statement of where the 210 sat: the bottom of the automatic range, below the 88 Mk II and the Laboratory Series Type A.
For a collector, the 210 is a period piece, not a high-fidelity instrument. It belongs to the same generation as the Type A and the 88 Mk II and shares the general Garrard approach to changers of that era. It was never sold as a competitor to the transcription-grade 301 or the Laboratory Series machines. Buyers today mostly find the 210 as a complete, cosmetically intact changer in a console pull or as a standalone unit. The realistic expectation is a working automatic mechanism with the usual service needs of a 60-plus-year-old changer: idler and lubrication attention, and a careful check of the changer spindle and trip mechanism before trusting it with a good record. Don't buy one sight-unseen as a "restored" unit. Buy it because the price is right and the cosmetics are honest.
The 210 was the accessible automatic of its moment, the changer a family actually owned rather than the one an enthusiast aspired to. It is not rare, it is not valuable, and it is not the Garrard anyone builds a collection around. It is documented in the period press, and it's worth picking up when one turns up complete and reasonably priced.
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