Almost a year ago The Ear published my review of the VPI Prime Signature turntable, which you can find here. In summary, I found it to be an excellent machine, with fine build quality and excellent sonics. Here we are, an eventful 12 months later, and I have had another VPI machine in my system, this time […]
I first visited Monmouth County in central New Jersey in December 1981. I had joined a company called Perkin Elmer Data Systems which was based in Oceanport, New Jersey and was sent there, with a British colleague, for two weeks to learn all about the products which I was going to be selling. This was […]
Touraj Moghaddam has been creating extraordinary hi-fi equipment for decades but is undoubtedly best known for his work on turntable design, initially at Roksan with such legendary products as the Xerxes and TMS3 to his credit and latterly at his most recent venture, Vertere Acoustics. I have had the pleasure of meeting him a few […]
Rega Planar 10 turntable and arm Five years before the Rega Planar 10 Rega launched the RP10, a turntable based on the innovations developed for Rega’s cost no object Naiad. The RP10 moved the goal posts, it redefined what a turntable that cost less than a car could do and I have been enjoying my vinyl […]
Turntable design has always been open to new ideas, the variety of approaches to the apparently straightforward process of measuring modulations in a groove is quite extraordinary. And one of the more left field approaches is that taken by American designer Bill Firebaugh, creator of the Well Tempered turntable, a design that’s been around since […]
What do you do after you have set up a vinyl mastering studio using vintage hardware and established its credentials with some truly great sounding records. If you’re Darrel Sheinman founder of Gearbox you decide to make a turntable using the brand that’s been so carefully nurtured. And not just any turntable, the Gearbox Automatic combines technology […]
A few years ago Rega set out to build the ultimate turntable, they looked at completely new ways to create a plinth with massive stiffness and negligible weight and used technology from F1 and aerospace to create the Naiad, the only cost no object product the company has ever built. The research that was done for […]
It’s about time Rega incorporated a phono stage into its entry level turntable. With the world awash with cheap, flimsy turntables that are more likely to destroy vinyl than do it any justice the market is crying out for easier solutions. Unlike all other forms of music players in the home the turntable is the […]
As the title of the company’s book suggests Rega treats the turntable as A vibration measuring machine, a seismograph for the tiny variations in a vinyl groove. That doesn’t sound very romantic but it’s what you need if you are going to turn those undulations into a musical signal that resembles the signal that was […]
I immediately recognise Danish design. The well thought out minimalist looks, the neat and elegant lines, the use of colour… it draws me in like a magnet and just because of that I promised myself that one day I would listen to a Bergmann Audio turntable at home. It took a few years, but recently […]
Rega turntables are like buses it seems, you wait an age then two come along at once! It’s been a while since Rega made a Planar or P2 but back in the day there were only two turntables in the range and this was the more affordable option. The last P2 was introduced in 2000 […]
It has been a while since Rega used this name on a turntable but in the seventies, eighties and nineties the Planar 3 was considered the next best thing to a Linn LP12. The company built its reputation on the Planar 3 and cemented it with the RB300 tonearm, a turntable and arm that remained […]