Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Euro Audio Team E Go (£6300)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Oct 21, 2014
One of the world’s most expensive, highly-developed tonearms are ‘unipivots’, though in some cases they have additional bearings: Mørchhas a dual pivot to give lateral stability, Kuzma a cunning four-point system; Continuum’s Cobra arm uses a secondary outrigger pivot mounted on its own bearing. However, it was left to Bob Grahamof Graham Engineering to come up with what is arguably the most elegant way of maximising the benefits of the unipivot concept and smoothing away its disadvantages. The breakthrough came with his ‘Magneglide’ magnetic stabiliser system – the major innovation of the first, B-44, Phantom arm. Graham lists six separate benefits for it: increased lateral stability, easy azimuth adjustment, a higher lateral inertia component for improved bass reproduction, augmentation of system damping, true vertical pivoting of the stylus with no rotation as the arm is raised, and easily adjusted anti-skate compensation.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Techdas Air Force One (£75,000)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Oct 21, 2014
It does not take a genius to see, even without hearing what one could do, that the Air Force One, with its air suspension, air bearing and vacuum LP hold-down, is something out of the ordinary. This turntable is the fruit of almost a half-century’s experience in high-end audio. Chief designer Hideaki Nishikawa-san says ‘The goal of Air Force One is to achieve silence in reproduction comparable to digital reproduction, especially in reproducing the recorded information of the background noise. ’ This is the first time we’ve ever heard a turntable designer acknowledge that the background and between-track silences of digital are virtues one should aspire to in analogue, even if attaining them seemed impossible.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Clearaudio Ovation/clarify (£4360 £4610 Depending On Finish)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Oct 21, 2014
New to the Clearaudio line-up this year, this tidy-looking Ovation model sits at the top of its group of turntables that all feature a rectangular plinth. Borrowing from the Innovation range, the Ovation nonetheless brings several new technologies of its own into play. The plinth is made of aluminium layers sandwiching a layer of Panzerholz ply. (This is is claimed to offer considerable sonic gains over such alternatives as acrylic and standard wood.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Acoustic Solid Wood Mpx (£2075)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Oct 21, 2014
Acoustic Solid is now back in the UK, and one of the first decks distributor BD Audio has chosen to bring to our attention is the Wood MPX. While its higher echelon turntables are largely constructed of metal and circular in appearance with additional arm and motor mounting pods, the Wood series are more conventional and plinth-based; five variants are available. The Wood MPX boasts a 70mm-thick plywood (rather than MDF) plinth. Its high mass, 60mm platter is driven by a freestanding synchronous AC motor via a rubber belt (notwithstanding the company’s description of it as a ‘string drive’ design).
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Inspire Hi Fi Enigma (£2500)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Oct 21, 2014
The world once more starts to embrace idler-drive, the problem faced by a turntable manufacturer today is that tooling-up for a completely new design would be prohibitively expensive because of the relatively low production numbers involved. Inspire Hi-Fi has stepped up to the challenge of providing an affordable solution and, as with its Technics SL1200-based Monarch flagship [HFN Oct ’12], has chosen to use a plentiful classic design, the evergreen Goldring Lenco GL75, as the basis for its Enigma. It comes in a range of fine paint finishes – red, blue and black are available. One of the most popular turntable units through the 1970s, the GL75 had a reputation for its fine build quality, so Inspire Hi-Fi has felt the need to do comparatively little to the deck’s basic mechanical componentry in order to exploit its replay potential.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Eat E Flat (£4100)
Paul Miller  |  Jan 14, 2012
EAT revives an old idea from NAD in the 1980s, but with a modern execution. Welcome the E-Flat belt-drive turntable with its, er, flat carbon fibre tonearm The wife of Pro-Ject’s CEO Heinz Lichtenegger, Jozefina, is one of the gutsiest individuals in hi-fi today. Not only does she insist that the turntables under her EAT Forté banner are high-end, while hubby’s Pro-Ject concentrates on the affordable, she’s had the sheer guts to revive a much reviled form. Flat tonearms are as old as hi-fi itself, the E-Flat’s arm following Connoisseur’s CS1, the wooden Grace G-714, an early Grado, the back half of the ‘hinged’ Dynavector DV-507 and many others.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Roksan Xerxes 20plus (£6890 Inc)
Andrew Simpson and Paul Miller  |  Dec 16, 2011
Roksan's iconic vinyl spinner remains one of the most forward-thinking decks on the market and the latest version now comes with a raft of considered upgrades Back in the early 1980s if you were serious about vinyl replay and had the money, the obvious contenders to splash your cash on were Linn’s LP12, followed by rivals such as Michell’s space-age GyroDec or the left-field Pink Triangle. Despite drastically different looks, all three decks were essentially attempts to take the late Edgar Villchur’s ground-breaking three-point sprung suspension design to the next level. Then, in 1985, Roksan came onto the scene with the Xerxes, which promptly turned this perceived wisdom on its head. As Tufan Hashemi, Roksan Audio’s Managing Director, explained: ‘We argued that using a suspended or floating surface to support a record could not allow it to be accurately read, as the record itself would be floating.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Transcriptors Spyder & Audiomods Tonearm (£1250/£895)
Steve Harris and Paul Miller  |  Nov 30, 2011
From the reborn Transcriptors company comes an all-new turntable with a pedigree, a design that still follows in the footsteps of the classic 1960s and 1970s models The original Transcriptors Hydraulic Reference turntable was one of audio history’s great style statements. The story of the design and its creator, the late David Gammon, was told in our May ’11 Audio Milestone feature. Transcriptors was reborn in 2000, thanks to David’s oldest son Michael Gammon. Encouraged by American collector Don Sellers, Michael started an information website for enthusiasts.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Acoustic Signature Thunder (£6000)
Andrew Simpson and Paul Miller  |  Nov 30, 2011
From Southern Germany comes a seriously heavyweight deck that's built on solid foundations. But will the Thunder's roar light up the skies or rain on the parade? Thanks to pioneering automotive inventors such as Rudolf Diesel and Karl Benz, German engineering has a long established reputation for ‘quality and innovation’. These qualities could also be used to describe the nation’s hi-fi industry where brands such as ELAC and T+A have been proudly flying Germany’s audiophile flag for decades, paving the way for relative newcomers like Acoustic Signature, with its ranges of turntables which are regular players in the superdeck league. The new Thunder boasts a number of features in common with the ‘milestone’ Ascona (costing £10k more).
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Thorens Td2030a (£2475)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Nov 16, 2011
The latest member of the Acrylic series boasts performance to match the looks Part of Thorens’ Acrylic Series, the TD2030A sports a 33mm-thick plinth made up of two 15mm slabs of clear acrylic with a 3mm blue tinted layer sandwiched between. Looking edge-on, the plinth appears clear with just a thin dark line, but from any other angle, it’s filled with gorgeous colour, like the blue of the Aegean under a cloudless sky. The plinth stands on three imposing legs. These end in small pointed feet that screw in or out for levelling adjustment.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Audio Technica At Oc9/iii (£549)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Nov 16, 2011
Cosmetically identical, the latest revisions to the OC9 are all internal. For those wanting a taste of luxury at a sensible price there has long been Audio-Technica’s AT-OC9. First introduced in 1987 it has always been regarded a bargain of sorts, boasting robust construction, excellent tracking ability and a polished and pure sound. Certainly it was less romantic and mellifluous sounding than many cost-noobject MCs, but it was highly detailed and refined while possessing terrifically tight bass and vivid imaging.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Nagaoka Mp 500 (£450)
Ed Selley  |  Nov 16, 2011
A classic Japanese brand stages a welcome return with a competitive design It’s easy to forget that movingcoils were once the minority cartridge choice (not least because the best of them were low-output types needing complicated step-ups). For most hi-fi enthusiasts, moving-magnets ruled. In between MMs and MCs were other types: variluctance, movingflux – with Nagaoka providing, with its ‘Moving Permalloy’, one of the more successful alternatives to straight MM operation. Common to all, or nearly all, non-MCs was a higher output that would work with the standard 47kohm phono input then prevalent.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Ortofon 2m Black (£460)
Ed Selley  |  Nov 16, 2011
Ortofon's flagship moving magnet design offers superior spacial performance No strangers to the pages of HFN, Denmark’s Ortofon company remains one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of cartridges both for hi-fi and DJ use. Its best moving-magnets currently are the 2Ms, a four-strong series with interchangeable styli topped by this 2M Black, sporting a Nude Shibata stylus. It might appear that they all use the same body shell, with distinctive angular contours and internal generators with neodymium magnets, however the two best – the £280 2M Bronze with a Nude Fine Line stylus and this 2M Black model – are formed from a more rigid Noryl plastic/glass compound as well as employing better ‘engines’ featuring split pole pins with silver-plated copper wire. The 5mm-deep tapped fixing holes in the top of the body allow rigid bonding to an arm’s headshell.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Rega Rp3 (£549 W Elys 2 Pick Up)
Paul Miller  |  Nov 16, 2011
The latest version of the budget classic features additional bracing and a revised tonearm Rega’s philosophy is that while the plinth has to be as rigid as possible, it also should be as light as possible. And seeking to maximise the plinth’s rigidity between tonearm and main bearing, a phenolic stiffening brace is added. On the RP3, the brace visible on top of the plinth is complemented by a second one below, forming a stressed beam assembly. The actual plinth is a piece of special light furniture board, finished to a very high standard by something akin to a printing process.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Sme 20/3 (£8560)
Paul Miller  |  Nov 16, 2011
The latest improvements to a long-standing classic are subtle but extremely effective After launching the turntable range 20 years ago with the Model 30/2, SME founder Alastair Robertson-Aikman followed it with a lighter version called the Model 20 – thinner in upper chassis and subchassis plates, with a smaller, thinner platter and other reductions in mass. In 2006 SME released the 20 in a widened version that would accept a 12in arm. It was a huge success, so the Model 30/12 appeared to equal acclaim [HFN Mar ’09]. In the interim, the external power supply had been upgraded, and was made common to all models, while 2010 saw the introduction of a new black platter mat material.
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