Almost every major development in turntable design had occurred by the time the Heybrook TT2 was released in 1980. Although we had quartz-locked direct drive, British manufacturers usually avoided it due to cost concerns. As a result, the majority of UK decks were variations on the Linn theme, which was itself a variation on the […]
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The Aurora was the company’s first turntable, and it cost little under £1,000 when it was released in 2014. It’s a high-quality skeletal belt drive design hewn from black acrylic with a low-resonance platter, just like the original from 2003. It lacks traditional sprung suspension and must be placed on a well-isolated table or wall
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Back in the early nineteen seventies, the main purveyors of turntables in Britain were Garrard and BSR, with the likes of Lenco, Dual, Philips, Collaro and Balfour also providing some popular designs. Many were auto-changers, and they were frequently featured in popular radiograms of the time; however, they were far from suitable for audiophile use.
Pioneer PL-12D Review Read More »
Since its introduction over half a century ago, many hundreds of thousands of Hadcocks have been sold in over a hundred countries, making it one of the most popular tonearms that most audiophiles have never heard of. It’s a traditional unipivot design – indeed, for its fans, it’s the classic unipivot – that predates more
Hadcock GH 242 Export Review Read More »
If, as LeCorbusier put it, “design is intelligence made visible,” then Roy Gandy, the Rega RB300’s designer, has a few extra brain cells. This tonearm is a seminal design that was initially introduced in the summer of 1983. Its tracking weight spring can be chastised for adding a tinge of hue. The RB250, on the
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The vintage Ultimo 10X, a high output moving coil built and manufactured by Dynavector of Japan, will be remembered by any analogue enthusiast worth his record collection. It was one of the most musical cheap pickups available in the late 1970s, with the added benefit of not requiring a pricey step up transformer. The problem
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As one might anticipate, the cartridge market in the late 1970s was thriving. This was the pinnacle of the vinyl craze, when the format was all-powerful and the only method to listen to high-quality stereo recordings. As you might expect, the market was broad, with cheap Goldring G850 moving magnets retailing for around £10 and
Elite Electronic Industries 700 Review Read More »
To honor the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Johan Sebastian Bach’s death, Ortofon released three new Kontrapunkt moving coil cartridges at the turn of the millennium. The a and b comfortably outsold the c, despite the fact that they were all slightly different. The b was my favorite of the bunch, with a Nude
Ortofon MC Kontrapunkt b Review Read More »
The new Audio Technica AT-OC9X is the fourth iteration of this venerable moving coil in 32 years. Bonded Elliptical (AT-OC9XEB, £210), Nude Elliptical (AT-OC9XEN, £300), Microlinear (AT-OC9XML, £480), Shibata (AT-OC9XSH, £570), and Special Line Contact (AT-OC9XSL, £660) are among the stylus options. “When the first AT-OC9 series was introduced in 1987, it was an innovative
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After what seems like decades of waiting, Audio-Technica released a new cartridge line in 2017, with bodies in the 500, 600, and 700 Series and seven different styli kinds, including special line contact, Shibata, MicroLine, elliptical, and conical varieties. The playback of stereo, mono, and even 78 rpm shellac recordings is optimized in all versions.
Audio-Technica AT-VM530EN Review Read More »
