Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Thorens Td 309 (£1250)
Steve Harris & Paul Miller  |  Jun 15, 2010
Looks can be deceiving. At first glance, you might think that the TD 309 was designed just as an eye-catcher, but in reality it is easily the most radical and innovative turntable Thorens has produced since the company was revived around ten years ago by the dynamic Heinz Rohrer. For the TD 309 project, Rohrer called in Fink Audio Consulting of Essen in Germany, best known for its expertise in loudspeaker design. But, as Karl-Heinz Fink says, ‘We are all turntable guys! We like turntables! And if you work on loudspeakers, you deal with vibration at a micro level, dealing with problems that are similar.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Soundsmith Sg 200 (£5200)
John Bamford & Paul Miller  |  May 16, 2010
I can’t deny it. There is something highly evocative about a cartridge that glows in the dark. That’s right: two blue LEDs at the front of the Soundsmith cartridge light up to confirm its operational status. Just a gimmick? No, not really.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Pro Ject Rpm 10.1 Evolution Turntable (£2000)
Steve Harris & Paul Miller  |  May 08, 2010
Bigger and fatter even than the RPM 9, which it otherwise resembles, the RPM 10. 1 Evolution updates on the earlier RPM 10 with a better arm and other refinements. But the choice of materials is as important as the quantities of them. Pro-Ject’s Austrian founder and owner has been experimenting with different materials since the inception of the company 20 years ago.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Ortofon Cadenza Blue (£1000)
Steve Harris & Paul Miller  |  Mar 15, 2010
It’s tough at the top. About 20 years ago, Ortofon started telling us that its aim was to survive by continuing to gain an increasing share of a fast-shrinking market, until the point would come when it would be the only cartridge-maker left standing. This hasn’t happened, of course. There was a period when the numbers could be kept up only by pandering to the needs of DJs, whose destructive tendencies (fortunately) tended to help sales once you’d gained their loyalty; but eventually the shrinking hi-fi market stabilised.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Amazon 2/morch Dp 6 (£3700)
Steve Harris & Paul Miller  |  Jan 15, 2010
Strange as it may seem now, in the early 1990s there was a period when you could go for months without seeing a vinyl-playing product reviewed in Hi-Fi News. Here in the UK, at that time, there just weren’t any new turntables to review. In Germany, though, things were different. Every time we visited the High End Show, which was then held every year in Frankfurt, we would see more turntables than you could shake a tonearm wand at, not just new turntable models, but enthusiastic new turntable manufacturers.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Linn Retro Lp12 (£1925 Deck Only)
Steve Harris & Paul Miller  |  Dec 04, 2009
Simplicity! That was the slogan when Linn advertised in the 1974 Hi-Fi Yearbook. ‘Simplicity itself. . .
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Dynavector Drt Xv 1t (£5500)
Steve Harris and Paul Miller  |  Nov 30, 2009
Outstanding hi-fi products have never been designed by committee. They nearly always originate in the mind of one very gifted individual, like the late Dr Noboru Tominari. Dr Tominari was a professor of engineering at Tokyo State University when he launched the Dynavector company in 1975. He developed the first successful high-output moving-coil, which did not need a special step-up device but worked with the moving-magnet phono input that was then standard on every hi-fi amplifier.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Zyx 4d X (£2450)
Chris Breunig and Paul Miller  |  Nov 30, 2009
In our September 2006 MC cartridge group test, the Zyx R1000 Airy 3 emerged well and I ended up buying the review sample. I’ve lived very happily with it since. However, now Mr Nakatsuka has produced a flagship MC, which he describes as built ‘like the Parthenon’. He’s referring to its skeletal acrylic body, designed to eliminate panel resonances, which results in a net weight of only 4g.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Vpi Aries Scout Ii (£1500/£450 Arm)
Steve Harris & Paul Miller  |  Nov 03, 2009
Last year, an amusing VPI newsletter listed three important events of 1978. Coca-Cola reached China, and the Grateful Dead played at the Pyramids, ‘seeking perfect sound and immortality’. Finally, ‘VPI Industries, Inc, started its first year in business. ’ And 30 years on, VPI is still family-owned, building turntables in its small factory in New Jersey.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Koetsu Red K Signature (£3300)
Steve Harris and Paul Miller  |  Oct 30, 2009
Very few western audiophiles speak or read the language, but there are a couple of Japanese pictograms familiar to all. They have appeared on every Koetsu cartridge since the 1970s, and they always tell you that you’re looking at one of the hi-fi world’s most enduring objects of desire. When the original Koetsu MC1 reached the UK market in 1980, it was already a cult product in the USA and Japan. Here it cost about three times as much as any other top-of-the-range moving-coil available, but it quickly gained fervent devotees.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Dr Feickert Twin (£3995 Without Arm)
Ken Kessler & Paul Miller  |  Oct 04, 2009
Who better than a cartridge set-up maven to build a turntable? While any deck that accepts universal arms will, intrinsically, suffer an enormous margin for set-up errors when compared to decks with dedicated, integral arms, there’s something reassuring about the Feickert. . . especially for those who’ve used his set-up device.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Kuzma Stabi S 12 (£3880)
Steve Harris and Paul Miller  |  Oct 04, 2009
Vinyl record-player design sometimes progresses, often just precesses, and always revolves. You could say that any ‘new’ idea comes round again every 33. 3 years, although in the case of the 12in arm revival, it’s more like 45 years. Be that as it may, the ever-increasing band of enthusiasts who must have extra inches now have yet another intriguing new option.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Ortofon Mc A90 (£3000)
John Bamford and Paul Miller  |  Sep 30, 2009
Heralding Ortofon’s 90th anniversary no less, the MC A90 is the company’s brand new flagship moving-coil cartridge. When we first learned a few months ago about its development and imminent launch, you’d never seen such a scrabble in our editorial office to ensure that Hi-Fi News secured first dibbs on the first sample to arrive at Henley Designs in Oxfordshire, Ortofon’s UK distributor. It turns out we did better than getting the first in this country. What you’re looking at here is the first sample to leave Ortofon’s Danish factory.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Clearaudio Innovation (£11,770)
Steve Harris & Paul Miller  |  Sep 04, 2009
Unruffled by the conflicting diversity of the turntable world, Clearaudio has carefully evolved its own design precepts with little regard for peer pressure or pseudo-technical fashion trends. The result is a model line-up that offers a convincing hierarchy of performance and price. So if you start at the bottom of the Clearaudio Solution range, you can upgrade with a thicker platter, a doubled-up chassis, and so on. You might never reach the top of the line, which is the three-motored, parallel-tracking-armed Master Reference.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Pro Ject 6 Perspex (£1000)
Steve Harris & Paul Miller  |  Sep 04, 2009
Some turntable manufacturers seem to make one model last for decades, but Pro-Ject is not so inhibited. Even without counting all eight colourways for the Debut III, the Austrian company’s website lists no fewer than 21 different turntable packages. The very latest of these is the Pro-Ject 6 PerspeX. Visually, this is one of Pro-Ject’s happiest creations, certainly far more elegant than its earliest antecedent, the Pro-Ject 6, which I think was the brand’s first subchassis turntable.
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