Editor’s note: Prices correct at time magazine went to press. Please check with suppliers due to recent fluctuations in the Pound Sterling.

Cleaning Machines

The Okki Nokki RCM (£435) is hardly new but has been steadily improving in looks and build quality over 15 years. It’s a simple all-manual vacuum-suction machine, tidy and low in noise that stands as an exemplar for affordable wet‑cleaning.

The platter motor is bidirectional and runs smoothly in either direction, operated by a simple three-way toggle. The suction cycle meanwhile has the least din of any such machine I’ve tried. All-important suction from the 500W pump is not as high as my favourite VPI HW-17 though, requiring up to four revolutions to dry the surface, where the latter completes the task in under two. That does mean the velvet strips remain in contact with the record somewhat longer, potentially accelerating wear – and these do need regular checking and replacement when worn. 

Siting the record on the platter requires care as the spindle is under 2 mm high before the thread starts, and I found it too easy to place a record non-concentrically on the shank shoulders.

The metal clamp feels solid but mind you don’t quickly spin it loose and drop it, as it will damage the record or even the machine as it lands. Getting the right torque took some practice – too loose, and the record stuck to the tube after losing contact with platter. Too tight, and a circular mark was left on the record label from the puck’s rubber O ring.

The supplied goat-hair brush deserves mention; it is an effective two-row brush of natural fibres embedded in a wooden handle. Slightly on the soft side, it works effectively in spreading solution and working it deep into the record.

Cleaning results were very good, if perhaps not quite as pin-drop quiet as with upmarket machines. Nonetheless in its new immaculate white finish besides black, this is the best vinyl cleaning machine for the money. Additional accessories include a clear acrylic lid and 7-inch armtube. It has a notably compact footprint too, a serendipitous 33.3 cm square.

Stylus Cleaner

Keeping your stylus clean and free of contamination is a self-evident step in ensuring good vinyl reproduction. Various techniques are possible, from simply blowing or using a record brush to banish dust balls, to the more clinical approach of isopropyl alcohol on a cotton bud. The latter is often frowned upon though, as some diamonds are only fixed in place by soluble glue, and alcohol is feared to wick up the cantilever and compromise rubber suspensions. 

Many new cartridges include a stiff brush which can do a good job at lifting obvious build-up. Linn Products advocates a scarier method using the legendary green paper – a strip of abrasive sheet like fine wet’n’dry, with the sandpaper dragged along the needle’s very point.

Over the years I’ve alternated between careful use of a moistened medical-grade cotton bud, and an Audio Technica AT-637 ultrasonic cleaner. A different high-tech approach is offered by DS Audio with its ST-50 stylus cleaner (£75). This has a sliver of transparent gel housed in a compact metal tray the size of a snuff box. The gel is made from an advanced urethane resin that has remarkable ‘sticky’ properties, crucially without leaving a residue, and said to be developed for holding micro-dust in clean-room environments.

The gel in its nickel-plated tray is placed on a static platter, the needle gently lowered onto the fly-paper polymer, then raised. This action quickly captures any debris from the diamond, and just one or two needledrops worked as advertised, leaving the needle entirely muck-free when viewed through an 8× loupe.

Similar products are available, but this is may be the only one that uses ether-based urethane, so that absorptivity is not compromised over time by hydrolysis. In fact, the gel can be removed from its tray and rinsed under a cold tap to clean it, suggesting a good investment for squeaky clean stylus care.

Tracking force gauges

Time was when a simple Shure see-saw balance was deemed sufficient to set cartridge tracking force. Then like so much in audio, and life in general, we went digital. First up was the Winds Arm Load Meter ALM-1/01, originally many hundreds of pounds, followed by The Cartridge Man’s marginally more accessible yet eminently precise meter. Now the entrance fee for a digital balance has tumbled to just a few pounds, thanks to a plethora of Chinese-made devices marketed at jewellery and pharmaceutical enthusiasts.

The van den Hul Stylus Force Gauge (£81) is a seemly starting point among many facsimiles under different names, and there appears to be two distinct types in circulation. 

There’s a cheaper plastic-bodied version, typically around £10–20, working to two decimal places and powered by two watch batteries. It has mechanical buttons on its chassis but potential issues – my sample from ten years ago was eating (expensive) batteries before it stopped working altogether.

The vdH gauge is a different proposition, despite sharing the same style. For power it takes AAA batteries (2×), and while I’ve not tested long-term I’d anticipate these lasting longer.

It’s a weightier all-metal affair in die-cast aluminium, about 50% larger at 120 × 52 × 26 mm (wdh), and features a touchscreen with strong green backlight behind the large-segment LCD. Like most such ‘stylus balances’ it betrays its origins with selectable weighing units, handy for assaying your earrings to the nearest carat (ounces and pennyweight also available). 

For cartridge calibration it has the benefit of reading to three decimal places, making it easier to see if a nominal ‘1.75 g’ downforce is actually set closer to 1.745 or 1.754 grammes, for instance. Until recently I survived with a Clearaudio Stylus Gauge EXACT, good to one decimal place; now I’m finding adjustments in the order of 0.02 g are audible with a vdH Grasshopper and so I depend on two- or three-decimal precision to record changes and repeat settings.

Ortofon has a high-quality offering in the DS-3, made for the Danish company in Japan. This resembles more closely a laboratory or jeweller’s balance, with a large top plate about 60 mm square that extends on one side to provide a flat shelf to carry the stylus. That platform is set 3 mm above the base, slightly above a heavyweight pressing, but closer to ground zero than the vdH at around 5 mm. This could be of interest to users of ‘stable balanced’ unipivots, which may be sensitive to measurements taken above actual playing level.

The DS-3 also takes AAA batteries, this time not requiring a tiny screwdriver to extract. It reads ‘only’ to two decimal places, in other words the nearest hundreth of a gramme, yet does feel like an even better constructed balance. Its maximum load is 200 g rather than the 5 g of vdH; not essential for magnetic pickups but handy to enable the Ortofon to earn its keep in the kitchen, for example, as well as the music room.

Record Brushes

Record brushes are a popular and for some indispensable accessory. Besides the dry brushes used for sweeping up surface dust there are those used wet for cleaning and restoration

For wet cleaning many enthusiasts swear by natural goat hair, as the tapered strands are thought to better reach the bottom of the groove. A few years ago I settled on the Tonar Wetgoat with its single line of stiff bristles, and the Analogue Studio Goats Hair Brush (£21.99) has a similar form, albeit with three stacked rows of bristles in a wooden handle.

The fibres are softer than the Tonar, giving a gentler action, a tad too compliant for my taste, although the sheer number of bristles that are in contact at once should mean plenty of mechanical contact per cleaning revolution.

Back on dry land, in the ’70s the velvet block was almost de rigueur, with inlets for a few drops of water to barely moisten the pad and ward off friction-induced static. These have been almost totally supplanted by carbon-fibre wands, usually with two rows of fibres and a hinged cover that doubles as fibre wiper. AudioQuest sells a good example of the breed, its Anti-Static Record Brush (£17.95) pimped up with gold-plate strips either side. This suggests increased conductivity to the user-as-earth, promoted by a ‘zero Ω anti-static’ legend on the side. Curiously while carbon may have high intrinisc conductivity, its resistance here was measured at several tens of ohms. 

In contrast to some models the brush ends are relatively uniform along the length, giving more consistent contact along the record radius. Overall the AudioQuest proved to be a respectable well-made record brush.

Analogue Studio has several similar brushes in its range. Resembling a dustpan brush in profile, the Big Vinyl Carbon Fibre Record Brush (£18.95) is easy to hold in a fixed place as the record spins, if less manoeuvrable through the wrist for elegant sweeps off the surface. Perhaps its main drawback, in common with its handle-free counterpart the Hand Held Carbon Fibre Brush (£16.95), is the lack of any built-in method to remove dust from the fibres. It’s tempting to use a finger or the palm to wipe off debris but this will result in trace oil meeting the fibre ends, and thence to the record surface, an absolute no-no. Keep a microfibre cloth on standby.

If static charge is a concern, perhaps the best way to discharge is by connecting the brush to electrical earth: meet the De-Stat Brush With Grounding Cable (£16.99). This takes the classic wiper/guard form, adding a detachable 1 m wire with a spade terminal. This can be connected to an amp’s earth post to keep the brush at ground potential, and the shiny chrome-effect plastic also proved conductive too. 

Almost an order of magnitude dearer, the Yukimu ASB-1 (£140) nevertheless proved a most versatile brush, good for the most delicate of vinyl sweeping as well as dusting around delicate fixtures like tonearms and cartridges. Marketed by Furutech outside Japan, this 165 mm-tall brush resembles a makeup artist or painter’s sable, with very soft fibres around 20 micron thin. 

These are a 50:50 mixture of light goat’s hair, plus an innovative synthetic developed by Mitsubishi Chemical known as Corebrid B. This fine acrylic staple fibre incorporates a conductive carbon-loaded core that promises to allow coronal discharge of the weak microamp currents that flow in static conduction. In testing I found that a little tickling of the SME tonearm and its dust-magnet outriggers with the Yukimu would leave it spotless for longer than other spring-cleaning regimes. It also makes for a safe and strangely satisfying way to chase away random fluff from the vinyl surface.

Destatic treatment

On the basis that prevention is better than cure, why not stop dust from being drawn to a record in the first place? That’s the aim of static-neutralising products like the Furutech Destat III, a hand-held ioniser running from four AAs. Resembling an ice curling stone, this lightweight gadget includes four balanced-ion generators that ionise surrounding air, and a silent fan that wafts the charged molecules toward your object of interest – not just LPs, it can be directed at the deck itself or anything that tends to get charged and collect dust. Besides helping reduce static ionisers also seem to have a calming feel-good effect on humans too.

Hole truth

The final accessory here I was blissfully unaware was even needed but will be useful to owners of certain turntables that closely follow engineering standards. The Clearaudio LP Drill (£40) is a simple tool to ream out the centre hole on any record that has been issued fractionally undersize. 

International standards (IEC98-1958/1964/1987 and DIN45547-1981) agree that the diameter of the hole shalt be 7.24 ±0.09 mm. Some manufacturers such as Linn, Rega and Michell err toward the undersized (at 7.09, 7.15 and 7.14 mm respectively) so are unaffected by the majority of pressings, but Clearaudio itself plays closer to the rules. So if you find too many records are just too tight for comfort, use this drill to gently enlarge the hole. Verified at precisely 7.24 mm, this is a hard-to-find bit size, which Clearaudio mounts in a high-quality aluminium handle. 

[Thanks to Analogue Seduction, Decent Audio, and Sound Fowndations for providing samples of the featured accessories]

Whether you’re an established expert or someone simply exploring the idea of adding an analog machine to your front end, this event will be tailored to the interests, needs and knowledge of those attending. While the machines used for the workshop will be ATR’s own state-of-the-art 102 2-track and 104 4-track, the day is not geared towards any specific brand or format. The in-depth information and experience provided will apply to any analog machine. You will learn subtle alignment techniques and tips to achieve the most dialed-in analog experience possible.

Location for the event will be Michael Romanowski’s Coast Mastering studio in Berkeley, California. Michael is a co-founder of The Tape Project, which in 2007 launched with the lofty goal of bringing original master tape level performance into your home. They’re still doing it today, and Mr. Romanowski is joined as an event participant by fellow engineer, Managing Director and co-founder of The Tape Project, Paul Stubblebine. Paul and Michael are two of the leading experts in analog recording today.

Coast Mastering is located in the former Fantasy Studios building, itself one of the most storied recording studios in US history. The list of artists who have recorded there is jaw dropping (most famously Creedence Clearwater Revival), not to mention soundtrack mixes including those for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Apocalypse Now, and Amadeus. The location for this workshop is significant and worthy of the trip on its own merits.

Finally, the world class expertise and facility will be finished with world class playback systems so that attendees can enjoy the fruits of their labor. Electronics from Doshi Audio will be partnered with loudspeakers from Rockport Technologies. Work hard. Play harder.

Learn from and enjoy the best in the analog industry. Space will be limited to just 12 lucky attendees. No matter how much or how little you think you know about analog tape machines and recordings, put this event on your calendar.

Participation is $500 per person. 

Please contact Tim Marutani (Tim@marutaniconsulting.com; (510) 652-1911) for further information or visit www.doshiaudio.com/reel-tape-workshop to reserve one of the limited spots!
 

In the pantheon of fine turntable/tone arm rigs from the German firm Acoustic Signature, the entry-level models have traditionally been affordable, but not too many rungs up the performance ladder things start to get expensive in a hurry. What was needed, some felt, was an attractive, upscale step-up model that conveyed some of the look and feel of upper-tier Acoustic Signature models, but with a not-too-daunting step upward in price. At Munich, the firm rolled out a new turntable model called the Merlin (€2500) that exactly fills this bill. When fitted with an Acoustic Signature TA1000 tone arm the Merlin package will sell for €3700.

Avid Oxytone tone arm

Turntable manufacturer Avid showed prototype versions of its upcoming range of tone arms, the first ever from the firm, comprising the flagship Oxytone pickup arm, the middle-of-the-range Paroxytone pickup arm, and the entry level Barytone pickup arm.

Of these three, the Oxytone is by far the most striking design in a visual sense and is the one most likely to be paired with the flagship Acutus Reference SP turntable. According to Avid, the Oxtone arm follows much the same core design philosophy as the company’s turntables, where the objective is to control the flow of energy, “separating the good and bad vibrations at source, and giving the ‘bad vibrations’ a path-of-least-resistance to an ‘energy sink’ where it can be harmlessly converted into heat.”

With that objective in mind, the Oxytone arm uses an advanced 3D printing technique to create curved, almost sabre-like single-piece titanium arm tube with an internal bracing structure and an internal “energy-conducting beam that efficiently transfers bad vibrations to the sub-chassis.”

The arm, says Avid, incorporated “rigidly coupled bearings” and a unique preload system that keeps constant bearing pressure independent of temperature. The arm uses a so-called “bi-axis bearing configuration” said to position the counterweight “over the rotational axis, reducing damaging lateral inertia. Finally the arm provides a fixed-weight bias compensation mechanism, a magnetic mass compensator that “offsets bearing loading”, and an arm locking system said to allow VTA adjustment on the fly.

Avid says all three pickup arms will be in production but Q4, 2017, with prices TBC.

Bergmann Odin and Magne ST linear-tracking tone arms

The Danish firm Bergmann Audio is perhaps best known for its ‘entry-level’ (hey, it’s a relative term) Magne T.T. air-bearing turntable and radial-tracking tone arm system and for its flagship Galder T. T. air-bearing turntable, which is capable of carrying as mans as four tone arms. However, for Munich the firm chose to unveil two air-bearing/radial-tracking tone arms that are suitable for mounting on non-Bergmann turntables: the Magne ST arm (€3,450 – €5950) and the Odin arm (€5250 – €7950).  The Magne ST is essentially a lightly redesigned version of the same arm supplied with the Magne T.T. package, but repackaged so as to be suitable for mounting on non-Bergmann turntables.

The Odin tone arm, in turn, is a top-tier effort intended for use on flagship, high performance turntables such as the Galder T.T. or equally fine turntable from other third-party manufacturers. Bergmann says a similar design philosophy guided creation of both the Magne ST and Odin arms, with particular emphasis on strong but simple construction, low resonance, and a deliberately limited parts count.

Burmester 175 turntable/tone arm/phono stage

More than just a high-end turntable/tone arm package, Burmester’s model 175 turntable is more of an ultra-high quality, turnkey analogue system. We say this because the 175 is not only a strong turntable/tone arm package in its own right, but also incorporates a built-in version of Burmester’s famous (and quite expensive) model 100 phono preamplifier. Accordingly, the 175 comes with a noise isolated, external power supply for the phono stage embedded within the turntable.

The table proper features a distinctive 4-motor/quad-belt drive system that is said to ensure “no irregular tension” on the turntable’s main spindle bearing. What is more, the system uses AC synchronous motors that “are driven by digital motor electronics which perform their task with a high-precision oscillator and perfect sine and cosine voltages.” Burmester claims the system yields rapid spin-up times and that the drive electronics are “completely immune to fluctuations in the mains voltage frequency.”

In turn, the turntable features a massive platter featuring triple-layer aluminium-bras aluminium construction, with the platter supported by a bearing “designed to be maintenance free for life.” The tone arm offers a carbon fibre/aluminium arm tube supported by hybrid steel/ceramic bearings. The model 175 weighs a stout 60 kg. The Burmester 175 will become available in late autumn of 2017 and is expected to sell for about €30,000.

Clearaudio Concept Active vinyl playback all-in-one & Tracer tone arm

From the German analogue audio specialist Clearaudio came a new vinyl playback package called the Concept Active that gives new meaning to the term ‘all-in-one’. Basically, the ingenious package combines the ingenious and well-regarded Concept turntable and Satisfy tone arm, adds a Clearaudio Concept MC phono cartridge, and then incorporates both a built-in phonostage and a headphone amplifier. The upshot is a package where all you need to get started are some good vinyl records and either a hifi system or a good pair of headphones. Going from zero to vinyl has never been simpler (or executed in a more classy, eye-pleasing way).  The Concept Active is priced at €3,310.

Also new for Munich from Clearudio was the Tracer tone arm, which neatly takes its place in Clearaudio’s extensive ‘Tonarme’ family between the present Magnify and Unify tone arms. The Tracer is described as a minimalist design that places an emphasis on stable positioning of the phono cartridge above the record surface. The Tracer is offered with either silver or black carbon fibre arm tubes and sells for €1,900.

Dr Feickert Analogue Wren phono stage & Linear power supply

Many enthusiasts are familiar with the ingenious and extensive range of analogue set-up tools offered by Dr Feickert Analogue, as well as the firm’s beautifully made line of turntables, but for this year’s Munich event Feickert took its first-ever step into the world of analogue electronics as embodied in the new Wren phono stage (€7,000) and its companion Clean linear power supply (€749). The uncommonly versatile Wren can handle MM and MC cartridges and offers extensive programmable gain and loading options for multiple cartridges, which also can be adjusted on the fly. Once an ideal combination of settings is selected, users can store those settings in an internal database and label them, for example, with the name of the specific cartridge for which they are intended (e.g., “Lyra Atlas”).

Funk Firm AK1 tone arm

Funk Firm’s chief designer Arthur Khoubesserian unveiled his cost-no-object, shoot-for-the-stars AK1 tone arm, which will be priced at £24,000. The AK1 is a pivoting, tangential-tracking tone arm whose headshell is carried on a precision-made articulated mount and that—via a thread-driven cam-like mechanism—gradually adjusts its tracking angle to maintain tangency to the record groove as the arm traverses the record.

About now, audiophiles of a certain age might be thinking, “Isn’t this a little like the Garrard Zero-100 tone arm from days gone by?” The answer is that yes, both designs used articulated headshells to maintain groove tangency, but that no, the arms couldn’t be more different in execution.  (The Garrard Zero-100 is to the AK1 what the Wright Brothers’ first Flyer aeroplane is to a modern day Typhoon Eurofighter.)

In particular, Khoubesserian has laboured long and hard to eliminate all potential sources of bearing play in the connection between the headshell and the main arm tube, which is itself a resonance-free structure that leverages technology created for Funk Firm’s critically acclaimed FX-series tone arms.

In a conversation with Khoubesserian, the designer explained in some depth ways in which he thinks the design of the AK1 should enable it to outperform present day radial-tracking tone arms and also other articulated-headshell tangent-tracking tone arms presently on the market. At this stage, Khoubesserian plans to build just 50 of his exquisite and more-or-less hand-built AK1 arms, but our educated guess is that those might sell out surprisingly quickly. If this happens, it means Funk Firm might soon be faced with a decision as to whether to build more.
 

Kuzma 4Point 9-inch tone arm & CAR 60 moving coil phono cartridge

Kuzma’s 4Point tone arms in both 11-inch and 14-inch lengths have received critical acclaim from Hi-Fi+ and other publications, but with this said there are two potential problems with the arm(s). First, they are big and comparatively heavy, thanks in part to Kuzma’s beautiful but also massive VTA adjustment towers, which are a standard feature on the 4Point arms. Second, they are expensive (selling in the US for between $6,675 – $7,080, depending on the wiring options specified).

For Munich, though, Kuzma tackled both problems by introducing its new 4Point 9-inch arm, which is provided sans the aforementioned VTA tower, but is there for lighter, more compact (thus fitting on a wider range of turntables), and considerably less expensive. In fact, the new 9-inch 4Point will sell for €3,600. For those who have yearned for a cost-reduced and also more compact version of the desirable 4Point arm, your moment has arrived.

One other new development from Kuzma was the launch of what is by far the firm’s most exotic moving coil phono cartridge to date: namely, the CAR 60, which features (gulp!) a diamond cantilever and sells for €12,700. When Franc Kuzma took the CAR 60 from its case so I could snap a photo of it, he handled it with the sort of extreme care I imagine would be reserved for transferring vials of nitroglycerin to and from safety cases. Given its lofty price, the CAR 60 is one phono cartridge owners will want to keep far, far away from curious but potentially ham-fisted visitors.
 
Primary Control FCL (Field Coil Loaded) tone arm and Kinea turntable

Primary Control is an analogue audio specialist from the Netherlands that offers an unconventional and very well thought-out direct drive turntable called the Kinea (€12,000), which can be fitted with any of several Primary Control tone arms. What caught my eyes and ears, though, was the firm’s new field coil loaded FCL unipivot tone arm (€25,700) and the closely related Gravity tone arm (€13,900).

Under the FCL concept, one starts with a very high quality unipivot tone arm design, complete with a unipivot bearing positioned at the arm’s centre of mass, but then adds an externally powered and controlled constant current field coil torsional stabilisation system. Multiple benefits accrue, including a unipivot design that is free of bearing chatter, offers rock solid torsional stability (unlike other unipivots, the FCL doesn’t rock from side-to-side), offers very low friction, provides a non-friction magnetic anti-skating mechanism, and incorporates a low resonance arm wand. The net effect is of having a unipivot that does everything you would want a unipivot to do, but with no adverse side effects (in particular, no torsional rocking motions to contend with). The FCL isn’t cheap, but then cutting edge designs never are. Happily, the firm’s Gravity tone arm incorporates much of the thinking behind the FCL but at a (somewhat) lower price point.

The Kinea, though not new for 2017, is a big, beautiful variable-torque “coreless direct drive” turntable with an oversized 360mm platter. The motor is a relatively low-torque, brushless, air core design that is geared to minimise magnetic motor cogging effects. On start-up, however, the motor can temporarily go into a 5-second period of high-torque operation to bring the platter up to speed, but thereafter reverts back to a low-torque “standy” operating mode. An electronic regulation system enables variable torque operation. The platter is a five-layer composite, while the spacious plinth of the turntable allows room for arm boards supporting 9-inch to 13-inch tone arms.

Sonically, I was struck by the Primary Control analogue rig’s light, lithe, agile, and noise free presentation. Further listening is indicated.

Thorens TD907 turntable & tone arm

The German firm Thorens showed a family of three new 900-series turntables comprising the entry-level TD 903 (€6499), the mid-level TD 905 (€7999), and the flagship TD 907 (€11,500). All three turntables are thoroughly contemporary in internal design, but their external appearance features a deliberately retro look that is intended as an homage to classic Thorens turntables from the past (specifically the TD 160). All three turntables use a three-spring suspended sub-chassis design, plus high-rigidity plinth top and bottom plates fashioned from an internally dampened yet also stiff laminate of aluminium and polyethylene. The TD 903 and TD 905 come with glass platters and 9-inch TP 92 tonearms, while the TD 907 comes with a machined metal platter and a 10-inch TP92 arm.

The TD 907 ha certain distinctive features that its sibling do not, including provisions for levelling the turntable sub-chassis via top plate-accessible adjustment screws, plus and adjustable air-damping system for the sub-chassis suspension system. A further interesting touch is that the TD 907 tone cables provide the option of either single-ended (RAC jack-equipped) and balanced (XLR jack-equipped) output sockets as found on the turntable’s rear panel (user must choose to use either one option or the other, though, as the tonearm cables are soldered directly to one’s chosen set of outputs). The machined aluminium platter features an inset acrylic top disc that acts, says Thorens, as “a damping pad for the grooved surface of the record.” Finally, the feet of the TD 907 are adjustable and fitted with “triCom and viscose foam inserts.”

In many respects, the TD 905 is a “TD 907 Junior” and although the TD905 does not carry the full set of features that the TD 907 does, it can be upgraded at a later date to become a full-on TD 907 via a pre-planned Thorens upgrade path.

Best Analogue Sound of Show

AudioSilente Blackstone Reference turntable & BlackSilent tone arm

The Italian firm AudioSilente has long been a proponent of super high-quality idler-wheel drive turntables in the vein of certain classic designs from Lenco and Thorens) as evidenced first by AudioSilente’s original Blackstone turntable and now by the even more ambitious Blackstone Reference turntable (€39,000). Please understand that these are not ordinary idler-wheel designs, but rather turntables that execute the idler-wheel concept with aerospace-like precision and with attention to detail that makes the turntable drive mechanism seem more than a little like a fine mechanical Swiss watch writ large.

Accordingly, the thick triangular plinth of the Blackstone Reference is formed from “isostatic graphite HDG” (a very high density form of graphite that looks, well, like a slab of black stone, only better), wear components are made from precision ground and chrome plated casehardened steel, rotating parts are made of machined aluminium and then balanced, the 8kg platter is fashioned from brass and bronze with an isostatic graphite HDG sub-platter, the main spindle bearing is made of oil-pre-preg sintered bronze and milled to almost ridiculous tolerances (0.005mm!), both spindle and pulley bearings rest on grade 3 ceramic ball bearings (with ruby bearings as an option), and power is supplied by a very high-torque Pabst motor with speeds controlled by a Quartz-oscillator equipped electronic control system that promises speed accuracy of 99.9998% with a 50% reduction in motor speeds vis-à-vis competing designs. Capping things off is Audiosilente’s 13.5-inch Black Silent tone arm (also available in a 10-inch version with graphite arm tube.

The upshot is a turntable/tone arm combination that is extraordinarily quiet, offers authoritative pitch stability, and that supplies an unfailingly solid foundation against which the music can unfold. There is a subtle but pervasive sense of confidence and self-assuredness about the AudioSilente turntable, as if it is incapable of being flustered by anything short of a bomb blast and will never put a foot wrong. It’s a great turntable that bears further watching and listening.

SME 30/12 turnable and tone arm

After being away from the Munich show for roughly 27 years, the great British analogue audio company SME was back with a purpose. The SME stand featured a static display highlighting not only current SME turntable and tonearms models, but also including a glass “Wall of Fame” case featuring a display of SME’s greatest analogue products from the past.

But the best part of the stand featured an inner demo room where SME has set up a system featuring its flagship Model 30/12 turntable, Nagra electronics, and YG Acoustics Sonya 1.3 floorstanding loudspeakers. For those not familiar with the SME 30/12, it is in essence an uprated version of the firm’s Model 30/2 turntable, but one geared specifically for use with the flagship SME V-12 (12-inch) tonearm. The 30/12 is not a new turntable/tonearm system, but it is without a doubt one of the world’s finest—as was made very clear during the brief listening session I was able to enjoy. The SME/Nagra/YG Acoustics system sounded—in a word—“magnificent”, with levels of transparency, dynamic expression, and all-round quietude that rather forcefully reminded me of what a great record playing machine SME’s 30/12 really is. While the new and now has a certain fascination, the 30/12 reminds us, as the old saying goes, that “sometimes the old ways are best”.

Worthy of Note

Mag Lev Audio turntable & tone arm

Arguably the most eye-catching and wonderment-inducing turntable at Munich was the aptly name Mag-Lev Audio turntable and tonearm. I say this because the Mag Lev’s platter is held aloft, centred over a fixed point, and rotated by magnetic levitation/magnetic induction, meaning that in side-view the platter shows itself to be floating on air. Period. There is no main spindle bearing at all, nor is there any apparent mechanical platter-drive system such as a belt or idler wheel. Benefits are said to include elimination of all mechanical (that is, bearing-induced) plus looks that are assured to amaze and delight listeners/viewers. The Mag Lev turntable, complete with tonearm and cartridge, will sell for about €1,400.

Perpetuum-Ebner PE 1000 turntable & tone arm

German audiophiles will be well familiar with the name of analogue specialist Perpetuum-Ebner—a firm that had level the market for a time, but that was reborn in 2014 with the launch of the comparatively expensive flagship PE 4040 turntable. What was needed, some felt, was a more basic PE model that would embody the firm’s core values, both technically and sonically, yet would be more accessibly priced. The model that fits this design brief perfectly is the new PE 1000, priced at €1,490 with tonearm and cartridge.

The PE 1000 use Perpetuum Ebner’s signature solid split chassis (platter and motor support on one side, tonearm support on the other), offers an electronically controlled DC motor, features a minimalist 9-inch aluminium tonearm with “biaxial bearings” and a thread-and-weight anti-skating system, a satin-finished acrylic platter with felt mat, and that comes fitted with an Ortofon 2M moving magnet-type phono cartridge.

Stoic wall-mount turntable stand

Turntable stands and other types of specialist audio furniture are all well and good, but there are times when it would be desirable to decouple one’s turntable stand from the floor altogether. A wall-mount turntable stand would seem to be the obvious answer, but about today’s beefy and very heavy top-tier turntables? Does anyone make a wall-mount stand suitable for them? Stoic does.

The Stoic wall-mount stand is exceedingly strong, has a good isolation system for the top plate upon which the turntable will rest, and is built in such a way that it can be (and for now must be) bolted to a masonry wall—a type of wall that is relatively common in Europe and the UK. At present, three finished versions of the Stoic stand are offered: Birch ply (€1,100), Black (€1,170), and Slate (€1,700).

In conversations with the Stoic team, we discovered the firm had only recent become familiar with the stick-built construction methods commonly found in the US, complete with wall stud spacing that complies with a 16-inch centre-to-centre standard. In light of this, Stoic anticipates creating a US-spec wall-mount plate for its stand that will incorporate 16-inch spacing for the requisite wall-mounting bolts.

Tien Audio Ltd. Triple turntable & tone arm

The Tien Audio Triple turntable & Viroa tonearm (projected price $5,000) look very promising. The Tien Triple is so named for two reasons: first, because its drive mechanism features three, microchip-controlled DC motors sharing a common drive belt, and second because it can accommodate up to three tonearms. Moreover, the main spindle bearing is a floating magnet design with a ceramic main bearing shaft.

The Viroa tonearm is a unipivot design featuring a polished sapphire bearing, a carbon fibre arm wand tube fitted with an aluminium headshell, and a distinctive adjustable, magnetic azimuth and anti-skate system. All in all, this appears to be an awful lot of turntable and tonearm for the money.

Setting up a turntable requires a good amount of attention and focus, so pick a comfortable and well-lit spot to do the work. Some exotic turntables can only be assembled in their final location, but whenever it’s possible, I like to work at a large sturdy surface such as a kitchen table. Just be sure to pick a time when the kids aren’t going to be running around creating havoc.

Most of what we call turntable setup, is really centred around installing and adjusting the cartridge in the tonearm. Sorting out the rest of the turntable is typically quite straightforward. Just follow the instructions for your particular model showing how to attach the belt, install the platter and mat, and loosen any transit screws. With some designs you’ll need to add oil to the main platter bearing, while with others you may have to insert the tonearm into its mounting collar. If you’re resurrecting an old forgotten record player from the attic, check to see if you can find a scan of the original manual at Vinyl Engine, a great information resource for all things turntable related.

The one key tweak that applies to almost every turntable, is the importance of getting everything level. Put your spirit level directly on the platter, and adjust the feet or underlying shelf so that it reads perfectly true in every direction. An out of level turntable platter will create added friction and noise which will mask low level detail, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to dig from those grooves.

Once the basics are done, you can get down to the challenging, er, fun part, which involves installing and adjusting the phono cartridge. Nothing will spoil your new vinyl experience more quickly than trashing a brand new cartridge that you scrimped and saved for several weeks to afford, so give yourself plenty of time to proceed deliberately and carefully.

To help allay that fear, most new cartridges come with some kind of protective cover for the stylus assembly, and it makes sense to use this whenever possible during the setup. There will be a few points in the process where you’ll need to have the stylus naked and exposed, but at other times it’s a good idea to keep it covered up.

Making the connection

I always find that it’s easier to make the electrical connections first before physically mounting the cartridge on the tonearm, but others insist that you should do it the other way around. You can make your own call.

At the back of the cartridge you’ll find four pins where you need to attach the four colour-coded wires that exit from the business end of the tonearm. Normally the cartridge pins have some kind of colour coding that corresponds to the wire colours, although some manufacturers like to make it a bit more cryptic by marking the pins with R+, R-, L+, and L-. Basically, the standard colours for the left channel are white for the positive connection, and blue for the negative, while the right channel uses red for the positive and green for the negative. Some arm manufacturers like to complicate things by throwing a black or yellow wire into the mix, so check the manual if there’s any doubt.

Personally, I prefer to attach the wires without using any tools, by grasping the end of the wire between my bare fingers and pushing it directly onto the pin. I find that I can get a better feel for what’s happening, and when I try using needle nose pliers or tweezers there’s always a greater danger of bending the clip over. The pins themselves are supposed to be a standard diameter, but it seems that some cartridge manufacturers missed the pin size memo, so you may need to carefully adjust the tightness of the clip to get an good firm connection. If it’s too loose, try using needle nose pliers to very gently squeeze the clip together. Opening up an overly tight clip is a bit trickier, but pushing a toothpick into the clip – or opening it with a jeweller’s screwdriver – can help.

Mounting it up

Once your wires are snugly attached, you need to physically mount the cartridge on the arm. Almost every cartridge manufacturer now uses M2.5 metric thread mounting screws, and most manufacturers supply suitable screws with the cartridge. Many cartridges have blind threaded screw holes, making it a doddle to run the screws down from the top through the headshell and into the top of the cartridge. If you’re not so lucky and need to use separate nuts, it’s often simpler to run the screws up from underneath the cartridge, with the nuts positioned on the top of the headshell. Once you’ve figured out the best way, position the cartridge so it’s near the mid point of the slots in the headshell, then tighten up the screws until they are just barely starting to get snug.

Now you’re ready to fine-tune the alignment. But before you whip out your alignment protractor, you need to get the tracking force roughed in.

A weighty subject

Many tonearms have a built-in stylus pressure scale, and the most common type uses a small freely rotating ring on the front of the counterweight, with markings for the stylus pressure in grams. To use this properly, first you need to calibrate the position of the ring on the weight, then add the stylus pressure you want by rotating the entire weight. With the anti-skating set to zero, place the cartridge end of the arm just off the right of the edge of the platter, then rotate the counterweight until you find the point where the arm will ‘float’ at around the same height as a record sitting on the platter. At this point the cartridge would be applying zero grams of pressure if it was on the record, so you can calibrate the counterweight by turning just the little numbered ring, while keeping the weight itself still, so that the ‘0’ is at the top. Now apply the tracking force you want by turning the entire weight anti-clockwise until the required stylus pressure is showing at the top of the dial. Most cartridges come with a recommended tracking force, or a range that you want to be in. With new cartridges the best performance is often found near the top of the recommended range, but you may find that as the cartridge suspension beds in with use it helps to dial it back a bit.

If you need to use an external scale, the simple but excellent Shure SFG-2 has been getting the job done for decades. More recently it has been joined by various digital strain gauge scales, ranging from cheap Chinese made eBay specials that sell for just a few pounds, to purpose made devices like the Ortofon DS-1. Most of these digital gauges give very accurate readings, although you should avoid those where the measuring platform is at a significantly different height than a record sitting on the platter.

Covering all the angles

Now that the stylus pressure is in a safe range, it’s time to set the overhang and horizontal tracking angle, a.k.a. zenith. People have written books on the subject of overhang alignment, but for most users, the differences between the thoughts of guys like Mr. Baerwald, Mr. Loefgren and Mr. Stevenson really aren’t all that important. I normally recommend using the protractor and alignment that came with your arm whenever possible.

Universal protractors that will work with any arm typically come in two types. For many years, almost everyone used what’s known as a two point protractor, where you adjust the cartridge until you find the point where it will line up squarely on two different grids on a flat plate. While a two point protractor can be perfectly accurate, it’s accuracy depends on how precisely you can judge a tiny amount of visual misalignment. That’s often a tough call, so for many years the gold standard was a protractor called the Dennesen Soundtracktor. This used a gantry with a point that you would align with the pivot point of that arm, resulting in perfect alignment using a single point. Unfortunately Dennesen stopped making Soundtracktors decades ago, but more recently some of Mr. Dennesen’s patents have expired, and we now have a new flood of Dennesen-like devices such as the Feickert Analog NG, The Pro-Ject Align It, and for the truly obsessed, the costly Acoustical Systems SMARTractor. These all do a great job, with far greater precision than a basic two point plate protractor.

Vertical tracking angle or more accurately stylus rake angle, is another subject that can get analogue junkies worked up into a frenzy. This involves getting the tall and narrow stylus footprint on the sides of the groove wall to match the way the record was originally cut. Think of the vibrations embedded in the record as being like folds in a curtain, and the stylus is like a tall rod that you want to move across the curtain to read the folds. If the angle of the rod doesn’t perfectly match the folds, you’re going to get a less precise read of how the curtain looks. Most manufacturers design their cartridges so that when the arm is parallel with the record, the stylus rake angle will be correct, but that doesn’t mean that a little careful tweaking won’t yield an improvement. Some arms allow you to raise of lower the back of the arm to make subtle changes to VTA; others, most notably Rega, feel that the added rigidity of a nonadjustable mounting outweighs any possible benefit.

Azimuth adjustment is very similar to the stylus rake angle, only in this case you want the V shape of the stylus to fit the groove squarely when viewed from head on. A tool like the Musical Surroundings Fozgometer lets you adjust this by balancing the channel to channel crosstalk, but again, getting the cartridge so it’s perfectly square on the record is 95% of the battle. Most tonearms don’t allow for this adjustment at all.

Skating away

Anti-skate is the final thing you need to set, and it’s also perhaps the most contentious. This is an outward force applied by the tonearm, to counteract the inward skating force created by the friction of the stylus riding in the groove. Anti skating is always a compromise, as it will vary depending on how deep of a cut the record is, whether it’s a quiet passage or a loud one, and even whether you’re at the start or the end of the side. Peter Ledermann who has rebuilt thousands of cartridges for SoundSmith, says that most of the well-used stylii he sees show greater wear on the outside than on the inside, and this tells him that most people are using too much anti-skate. He suggests using a blank record, and setting the anti-skate so that the cartridge moves slowly inward as it rides on the blank surface.

This covers all of the points of a basic turntable setup, but some of these adjustments can affect each other. Therefore it’s always a good idea to go back and recheck your stylus pressure and other settings before snugging down all of the various fasteners and calling it a job well done.

Finding the sweet spot

Once your turntable is aligned to perfection, you need to find a suitable spot to locate it in your system. Far more than with other components, what you put your turntable on can make or break the performance you achieve. The turntable is trying to read the tiny little squiggles that form the groove in the record, so any unwanted external vibration getting into the system can mask the subtle low-level information that you’re trying to hear. There have been many schools of thought about what makes good turntable support, but everyone agrees that you need to keep the turntable away from sources of vibration. Don’t put the turntable in the same bookcase as your speakers, and certainly don’t do what I saw a few times back when I was a college student, and plonk it on top of the nice flat top surface of one of your speakers. If playing records makes you want to dance around the room, then a wall mounted shelf is often the best solution to avoid the dreaded skipping record.

While most audio components are pretty much plug and play today, a turntable requires a little more care and expertise to deliver a great analogue music experience. Analogue setup pros are pretty thin on the ground these days, but with just a little handy work you should be able to get your own rig back in the groove.

Useful Resources

Acoustical Systems: www.arche-headshell.de

Analogue Seduction: www.analogueseduction.net

Clearaudio: www.clearaudio.de

Dr. Feickert: www.feickert.de

Musical Surroundings: www.musicalsurroundings.com

Ortofon: ortofon.com

Pro-Ject: www.project-audio.com

Shure: www.shure.co.uk

Vinyl Engine: www.vinylengine.com (free registration required)

Like old age, cartridge setup—done right—is not for sissies. It is an arduous, painstaking process that requires nerves of steel and infinite patience. If, like me, you tend towards clumsiness or near-panicky fits of pique when handling very small, very delicate items, you would be well-advised to leave cartridge setup to an expert like Andre—or to an analog maven or a retailer with a good deal of experience in the field. The cartridges being installed here are anything but cheap—$8500 (Anna) to $15,000 (Statement)—and getting fed up and doing something careless or stupid while handling them can end up costing you a lot of money.

Andre begins, of course, by mounting the cartridge in the tonearm’s headshell—here the Goldfinger Statement in the DaVinciAudio Lab Master Reference Virtu. Unlike the headshell of DaVinci’s previous flagship Grandezza tonearm, the Virtu’s is removable, which makes attaching a cartridge to it a bit easier (although it also adds a potentially resonant “joint” to the structure of the ‘arm). Obviously the width of the mounting screws has to be compatible with both the slots in the headshell and the screwholes in the cartridge, and the length of the screws has to be sufficient to clear the added height of the headshell, while still fastening firmly into the cartridge body. (Nowadays, most cartridges have screwholes tapped into their bodies—a big improvement over the so-called Golden Age of Vinyl, when cartridges only came with molded plastic loops on either side of their plastic chassis and had to be attached to the headshell with screws, washers, and nuts, adding difficulty to the mounting process and resonant mass to the entire setup.)

Before alignment Andre snugs the screws down but doesn’t fully tighten them, as the cartridge will need to be moved forward and back in the headshell and twisted slightly side-to-side to achieve proper alignment.

Step two is attaching the tonearm leads to the output pins at the back of the cartridge. Although I’m not showing you the process—just the result—this is (or, at least, can be) a tricky little step, depending on how handy you are. You have to use the right tool for this job and fingers aren’t it. You’ll need tweezers or small needle-nose pliers to do it right—and you’ll still have to be careful! The stylus of a cartridge, like the Goldfinger Statement here illustrated, is completely unprotected by the cartridge body—sticking out in front of it like a tiny invitation to disaster. If you seek to gain leverage while attaching the clamps of the color-coded tonearm leads to the (usually) color-coded cartridge pins by putting a finger on the front or side of the cartridge, you may very well bump that stylus with some force if your finger slips, and, folks, take it from someone who knows: You do not want to hit the stylus of a Goldfinger Statement (or any cartridge, for that matter) with your finger. Keeping the stylus guard on the cartridge when attaching the leads is the safest procedure, and what Andre has done here.

If you’re attaching a cartridge to a tonearm for the first time or switching cartridges, you may find that the clamps at the ends of the tonearm leads are too tight or too loose to fit snugly on the cartridge pins. Don’t force anything! The clamps may need to be slightly enlarged or slightly narrowed prior to attachment. You can do the former by inserting a toothpick into the clamp, opening the gap up a wee bit; to close it down some, use your needle-nose pliers, but use those pliers gently and sparingly! The clamps at the end of tonearm leads can only stand a little bit of strain. If you pull them or twist them or abuse them repeatedly, chances are they will break off, making it necessary to solder them to the tonearm leads again (a job you don’t want to do).          

Step three is setting VTF (vertical tracking force). You need to do this before alignment, but you don’t have to get VTF exactly right at this point—just in the ballpark of the manufacturer’s recommendation. You will need to check VTF again in any event after alignment and other adjustments have been made—and later by ear.

There are several digital stylus-force gauges on the market; if you’re heavily into analog I would recommend purchasing one of them. They are more precise than Shure’s mechanical gauge, although be aware that some of them are affected by a cartridge’s magnetic field. You can tell if you’ve got one of these if the VTF reading changes to any value other than 0.000 as you prepare to lower (or actually lower) the cartridge onto the gauge. If your meter does fluctuate as you position the cartridge above the gauge’s measuring platform, stop and press the TARE button. This should zero-out the meter, after which you can continue lowering the cartridge onto the measuring platform.

Step four is attaching an alignment jig to your turntable/tonearm. Once again, there are many of these on the market from freebies on the Internet, to protractor-style jigs like the custom-made one from Dr. Feickert that comes with the DaVinci Virtu tonearm, to engraved-mirror ones from Wally Tractor, to the dedicated paper or plastic graphs and other devices invariably supplied with tonearms.

I’m not going to go into the science behind alignment. Suffice it to say, that a cartridge in a pivoted arm is only exactly in the right position (in perfect tangency with the groovewalls) at two points in its arc of travel. Everywhere else it is slightly out of perfect tangency. A straight-line-tracking tonearm, OTOH, is always in perfect tangency vis-à-vis the groovewalls. However, neither a pivoted nor a linear-tracking tonearm will be “right” if it is not properly aligned to begin with.

Basically, alignment is a two-part process: 1) setting overhang, and 2) aligning the stylus. The first is accomplished by moving the cartridge back and forth in the headshell (toward and away from the tonearm pivot point) so that the stylus fits precisely in the pinprick engraved on your protractor at one or two specified points in its arc of travel (or, with a straight-line tonearm remains in the groove of your protractor throughout its entire line of travel). Stylus alignment is accomplished by twisting the cartridge body so that it is perfectly “squared up” within the engraved rectangular grid surrounding the pinprick on your protractor (while the stylus tip is sitting in that pinprick), so that the stylus is not just sitting in precisely the right point(s) for proper overhang but is aligned so that it is squarely in that point and not at an angle to it. You can see Andre adjusting alignment in the photograph above; he is using a flashlight in his cellphone to illuminate the cartridge and the jig.

Precision cartridge alignment can be a tedious, time-consuming task, and it takes someone with a steady hand, a keen eye, a good deal of previous experience, and the patience of Job to do it accurately, safely, and thoroughly.

Step five is setting stylus rake angle (SRA)—a variant of what we used to call setting VTA (vertical tracking angle) back in the day. ’Course, back in the day, we adjusted VTA solely by ear. Received wisdom was that it should generally be set so that the tonearm was parallel to or slightly below parallel to the LP’s surface. In practice, this always seemed to give you a richer, fuller sound with less treble bite, and in those days reducing treble bite was a good thing given the state of tonearms, moving-coil cartridges, and LPs (particularly Mercury LPs).

However, it turns out this formula, for all its salubrious effects in listening, was technically incorrect. In March 1981, Jon M. Risch and Bruce R. Maier published an article in Audio magazine titled “More Than One Vertical Tracking Angle,” in which they pointed out that, in order to play back an LP properly, in theory the playback angle of the stylus ought to be the same as the angle of the stylus in the cutting head, and their research determined that the cutting angle was typically 92º (not the 90º or less that we had always assumed was right).

The article didn’t have much effect until Michael Fremer, bless his analog heart, apparently rediscovered it. Since then there has been a bit of a mini-revolution in cartridge setup, in which measuring SRA and adjusting VTA to get SRA theoretically right—or close to right—have come to the fore.

The process of measuring SRA is not for the weak of spirit. To do it you must have a digital microscopic camera, a stand to put it on, a computer with a good deal of processing power, and, as is the case with every aspect of cartridge setup, a dedicated tweaker’s spirit, nerve, and patience.

Pictured above you see one of Andre’s digital microscopic cameras, sitting beside an Acoustic Signature Ascona turntable with a Kuzma 4Point tonearm in which an Ortofon MC Anna has been mounted. The microscopic camera is a USB device that plugs into a laptop computer, whose screen you will see shortly. What it does—once you get the stylus in precise focus (a process I literally couldn’t stand to do on my own)—is take a close-up picture, like the one below this paragraph, of the stylus sitting on a perfectly flat surface with, in this case, a cylinder of pencil lead, which also must be focused, sitting behind it to provide a flat horizon line.

Software, which comes with the camera, allows you to rotate two spaced lines, one of which is adjusted so that it is parallel to the stylus, from a position perpendicular to the record surface to a position parallel to the record surface (see below).

The computer then calculates the stylus rake angle (symbolized by the little white curve running from the black line at the back edge of the stylus to the flat surface the stylus is sitting on). In this case the measured SRA was 89.725º.

To adjust SRA for theoretical correctness, you then raise (or lower, depending on your reading) VTA until the SRA (which must be measured again—often repeatedly) is somewhere between 91º and 92º. (The slop built into this setting allows you to season by ear and by typical record thickness.) In the screenshot below, you see that SRA has been adjusted, by raising the back of the tonearm, to a closer-to-theoretically-correct 91.477º (which is where I liked it best). 

The upshot of this SRA business is that the received wisdom of the past was wrong. To get theoretically correct SRA, a tonearm should usually be raised above parallel to the record surface (sometimes a good deal above parallel). Of course, your ears must be the judges in this matter (as in all things audio). My own experience has been that a setting of 92º doesn’t always “sound” best. (Andre agrees and typically aims for an SRA of 91º to 91.5º.) Whatever SRA you ultimately decide on, be assured that getting rake angle right (or right for you) has profound effects on every aspect of the presentation–from overall balance to resolution, dynamics, staging, and imaging.

Step six of Andre’s setup is adjusting azimuth. There has been a lot of nonsense written about azimuth—some of it, alas, in the pages of TAS. Trust me: Azimuth matters, and getting it right doesn’t just confer a theoretical advantage; you can readily hear the difference (as you can with SRA).

Unfortunately, getting it right isn’t easy. Once again, you’re going to need a computer and, to do it properly, Dr. Feickert’s wonderful software program, Adjust+. 

Adjust+ is actually a suite of programs that permits the precise measurement of all sorts of things, from turntable speed to (as you will see) harmonic distortion. But its foremost use is setting azimuth with high precision.

To use it you have to have a test LP (one comes with the software, although Andre prefers to use The Ultimate Analog Test LP from Analog Productions). Here’s the drill: Before playing back 1kHz (mono) reference tones for the left and right channel (tracks one, two, and three of TUATLP), you route the signal from the outputs of your phonostage via a (supplied) RCA-to-3.5mm-jack cable to your computer’s mike input. (Andre actually uses a sophisticated outboard USB converter.) Adjust+ then measures (in real time) the mono output of the left and right channels of your cartridge, calculating average left-to-right and right-to-left separation (crosstalk) in dBs.

Without azimuth adjustment, neither Andre nor I have ever seen a cartridge that measures the same (or even close to the same) channel separation in both the left and right channels. Below, you can see the initial test we ran of the Goldfinger Statement cartridge, adjusted by eye and mirror so that it “looked” as it azimuth were correct.

Channel separation in this “eye-balled” setup measured -33.4dB L-to-R and -29.2dB R-to-L. Now, folks, that is better than a 3dB difference in crosstalk—from what “looked” like a fairly correct alignment! It should go without saying that imaging and soundstaging would be audibly affected by this setup, and so would timbre.

After considerable trail-and-error (unlike the marvy Kuzma 4Point, the DaVinci Virtu does not have a geared mechanism to adjust azimuth—you just loosen a set-screw and twist), Andre grew closer and closer to getting optimum crosstalk (equal channel separation) from both channels. Like everything else I’ve written about in this blog, azimuth adjustment can be a tedious process, but the results are certainly worth the effort. In the end this is the reading Andre got by means of Adjust+ (and his own inexhaustible patience):

You probably won’t be able to see this on your screen, but the final crosstalk measurements show -35.5dB L-to-R and -35.4dB R-to-L. Now, these aren’t just sterling numbers (although they are that); the results are instantly and dramatically audible in playback.

(Just as a side note, after mounting, connection, VTF, alignment, SRA, and azimuth Andre also measured THD via Adjust+ with the Goldfinger Statement in the Da Vinci Virtu tonearm and came up with the best results he’s ever seen from any cartridge and tonearm: 0.21% in the left channel and 0.29% in the right.)

Although it takes considerable expertise, getting everything just right in cartridge setup—as Andre does—has a tremendous effect on the overall sound. Those who dismiss analog as a form of nostalgia simply haven’t ever heard a great turntable, tonearm, and cartridge set up by a genuine expert. Thanks to Andre I have (on many occasions), and I’m here to tell you that, IMO, hi-fi playback doesn’t get better than this.

At the height of its popularity it was considered heresy to apply modifications unless they originated from the Linn factory, these days it seems to be open season with a multitude of options that cover almost every aspect of the design from power supplies to new motors, plinths and sub chassis.

The Khan explores new territory by offering a replacement for the pressed steel top plate together with a new internal cross brace and fixing hardware, this can be fitted without any modification to the existing unit. The original plate was slightly curved to enable a stressed fit to the plinth, and a degree of inconsistency had to be taken into account during the set up procedure this was an area that could have a major influence over performance. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the role played by this component is fairly critical, as it is effectively the foundation (albeit inverted) on which everything hangs or is attached to, looked at from this perspective it becomes clear how much of a factor it plays in the behaviour of the turntable.
Machined from a solid billet of aluminium, both the Khan top plate and the cross brace have a complex milled pattern on both sides to control resonance, the former is tapped to take the studs that replace the original bolts allowing better accuracy to the perpendicular. The surface is a fine blasted to a matt finish, a massive aesthetic improvement over the rather 70’s looking original. The top plate is completely flat, and a useful (though not always necessary) addition is a couple of clamps to augment the two fixing studs, that come into their own if for example the plinth is slightly out of true.

The team behind the development of the Khan have collectively had plenty of experience with the LP12, and speaking with Mark Digman, one of the partners in the project it was interesting to discover that ‘over engineering’ a product is not always the best solution. During the process of prototyping it was found that making the Khan thicker and more substantial effectively killed the performance of the turntable, and the final product is the result of a considerable amount of fine-tuning and listening to achieve the desired balance of attributes.

The first consequence of the Tiger-Paw kit becomes obvious during the process of setting the turntable up, where the greater accuracy and alignment of the bolts allows everything to sit in place more readily, but I admit this was an observation rather than actual experience. Phil March of Phonography originally alerted me to the Khan, and having fitted a few of them kindly offered to do the set up, he also happens to be second to none when it comes to getting the best out of a LP12. The current example dates from the early nineties with Linn modifications up to the Cirkus and an Armageddon power supply, but nothing beyond that. Tone arms used while evaluating the Khan were the Linn Ekos (an early one) followed by a Rega RB1000 and an Alphason HR100S, while the cartridge for the main part was a Lyra Skala.

Possibly one of the most obvious character traits of the LP12 as a basic turntable has always been a tendency toward a ‘mid bass hump’ or coloration if you will, that resulted in a mildly emphatic quality particularly evident with kick drum and bass guitar. Back in the day with Naim Amplification and speakers such as the Linn Sara, its quite possible that this was a contributory factor in the whole foot tapping / timing issue, particularly given the kind of records I was listening to at the time. These days with a very different, wider bandwidth system (and a broader range of music) it is not as camouflaged as it once was, and although not objectionable is far more difficult to ignore.

The Khan had the immediate effect of reducing this ‘bloom’ at the bottom end. I will admit that my very first reaction was one of slight disappointment; it felt as if it had taken all the warmth and bass weight with it as well, but the whole system (and in particular the cartridge) was cold, and so was I. A little later that evening everything had fallen neatly in to place, and over the period of a few records it became abundantly clear what the Khan modification was doing. Before describing the changes with the lower registers, I have to mention what for me was the most striking difference – the sheer presence of the music. With the mid range liberated from the now absent enveloping coloration, imagery, sound staging and projection of instruments was noticeably more coherent with a greater sense of projection away from the speakers. This heightened level of definition and clarity extended through the mid and into the high frequencies, coming from what I perceived to be a generally quieter background, with lower surface noise and less in the way of intrusive clicks.

So the bass was definitely more even, but what I found really intriguing was how much lower it seemed to go, reminiscent of some of the heavyweight and very expensive high-end designs that I have lived with. Rather than just a indistinct presence, it had an agile clarity that revealed more information and detail that the pre-Khan Linn could not cope with. I’m not suggesting that it wasn’t there previously, only that it tended to get lost amongst the less than well-organised bottom end. The really crucial aspect to this however, is that there was still a great sense of timing, which if anything was more natural and in keeping with the music than before.

Substituting the Ekos for the lighter RB1000 only served to confirm the differences I heard. I’ve always felt that that there was a mild conflict at the bottom end that somehow masked the full capabilities of the arm on a Linn, this was far less apparent with the Khan in place. As a result, I heard much more of the fabulously open mid range, speed and attack that I know the Rega is capable of, and it no longer felt as if the arm and cartridge were being held back.

The LP12’s success is all about a delicate balance of compromises. Tiger-Paw has identified what could well be a weak point in the design, and empirically come up with a very elegant solution that addresses the problem without disturbing that equilibrium. A lot of the available modifications for the Linn I have heard seem to work on a very ‘hi-fi’ level, and some end up making records sound a bit like CD’s, at which point I lose interest. The Tiger-Paw retains all of the musical qualities that go to make the LP12 so engaging, and the upgrade will work on any LP12 regardless of age or level of existing modifications. However, judging by what I have heard I would suggest that within the turntable hierarchy, the Khan should be an essential upgrade for your Linn before you consider anything else.

PRODUCT DETAILS

Price inc VAT: Khan £795.00
Clamp kit for plinth: £ 40.00

URL: www.tiger-paw.com

Leerer says the SRPP configuration has at times been used for small power amplifiers and is known for its ability to deliver current “into heavy capacitive loads.” One noteworthy aspect of the SRPP configuration is its elegant symmetry, which Fosgate describes by saying that the circuit “uses two triodes, (where) each triode is biased the same. The lower triode acts as a common-cathode gain stage with an active load, and the upper triodes acts as a common-anode gain stage with an identical active load. This is about as close to a complementary transistor pair as valves get!”

The Fosgate Signature is a “dual mono” design, with the preamplifier channels “located on opposite sides of the circuit board in near mirror images with dual triodes in a row down the center.” The preamplifier consists of three gain stages arranged as three complementary pairs of dual triodes. The first stage, says Fosgate, “has no NFB (negative feedback) to interact with the cartridge,” while “the second and third stages are enclosed in a single feedback loop incorporating both positive and negative feedback.” The preamp provides gain switches with settings that “provide a gain of 60dB or 42dB,” while a cartridge-loading knob provides settings from 100 ohms to 100k ohms. Input capacitance is a very low 50pF.

Fosgate says that the preamplifier’s RIAA network “is divided into two sections, one passive and one active.” The high frequency RIAA EQ (above 1kHz) “is accomplished with a passive network between stage one and two.” In turn, the lower frequency RIAA EQ (below 1kHz) “is accomplished with an active network around stage two and three.”

The preamplifier’s power supply is very special, too, though it uses no regulated power supplies at all. Instead, Fosgate has designed the circuit so that “each tube stage is powered by a separate storage capacitor which acts like a battery.” By design the storage capacitors are very large—10 to 20 times “oversize,” says Fosgate—so that the preamp’s power supply “simply holds the voltage across the capacitors like a ‘trickle charger.’” According to Fosgate, “there is absolutely no way for signals to leak from one stage to another through the supply, and the supply voltage on the tubes is rock solid.”

While the technology embodied in the Signature Phonostage is interesting in its own right, what’s even more interesting is its sound.

Let’s begin by noting that the Fosgate offers plenty of gain (60dB) for use with most moving-coil cartridges, yet is also very quiet—exceptionally so for a tube-powered phonostage. Indeed, Fosgate thinks he may have set “the world record for lowest noise with an all tube front end”—a claim I couldn’t verify, of course, but that makes sense given the Signature’s very high apparent signal-to-noise ratio. Low noise buys you several things. First, you’ll note a general sense of, well, lower noise, and second, you’ll enjoy concomitantly greater amounts of low-level sonic information. Thus, through the Fosgate, subtle textural and timbral details suddenly become more whole, complete, and well-integrated.

To appreciate what I mean by this, try listening to Pinchas Zukerman’s violin (and also viola) on Claude Bolling’s Suite for Violin and Jazz Piano [Columbia]. When played at moderate volume levels, Zukerman’s violin exhibits warm sonorities touched with sweetness, with the attack at the beginning of bowed notes sounding crisp and decisive, yet never edgy or “glassy,” as some phonostages tend to render them. And when notes end, you can easily hear the reverberant interplay of each note’s decay fading to silence within the relatively live-sounding recording space. But when Zukerman bears down for a moment of virtuosic flourish, you’ll hear his violin sound become the sonic equivalent of a shooting star—leaving behind a glorious, showering trail of high harmonics and evanescent overtones. In this and thousands of other ways, the Fosgate invites you to fall more deeply under the music’s spell, making complete those details that might have gotten lost with less revealing equipment.

Next, let me say a word or two about the Fosgate’s gain characteristics. Above, I’ve quoted Fosgate’s 60dB maximum gain specification, which is a figure many other phono preamps claim to meet or exceed. But what Fosgate’s number can’t tell you is how much more authoritative and dynamically unconstrained this phonostage sounds, so that it subjectively seems to play louder and with less apparent strain than some phonostages with higher gain specifications (e.g., the PS Audio GCPH). Where some phonostages sound constricted or congested when dynamics become challenging, the Fosgate simply throws back its head and sings at full voice without skipping a beat. Indeed, one almost gets the sense that the Fosgate makes a generous, open-ended offer with respect to high-powered dynamic passages, as if saying to phono cartridges, “If you can track it, I can amplify it, so let’s give this a try…” And lo, the Fosgate makes good on this offer—a quality that may be attributable to the Fosgate’s relative freedom from input overload (with many phonostages, as gain goes up, so too does sensitivity to overload).

I don’t think I fully appreciated the Fosgate’s dynamic power and agility until I played the Frederick Fennell/Eastman Wind Ensemble recording of Hindemith’s Symphony in B Flat (for concert band) [Mercury], where bold timbral contrasts and abrupt shifts in dynamic levels are the order of the day. In the symphony’s opening movement, I found the Fosgate could wade into full-on trumpet and percussion swells at one moment, yet shift gears in an eye-blink to cover delicate woodwind and low brass passages. The beautiful part was that, even at full throttle, the Fosgate always managed to preserve the burnished golden sound of the trumpets, the sounds of sharp mallet strikes and skin sounds from the drums, and the initial “ping” and lingering shimmer of high percussion instruments. What came as a revelation was the Fosgate’s remarkable ability to handle large-scale variations in dynamics and overall musical complexity, while maintaining consistently high levels of nuance and detail.

Let me expand on this point. With many components one has the sense of playing music within the constraints of a “zero-sum” game. In other words, detail levels can be terrific, provided that the demands of musical complexity and dynamic are low. Or, dynamics can be impressive, provided that the demands for sonic detail are modest and there are not too many musical voices at play at once. But with Fosgate you finally have the opportunity to hear dynamics, details, and graceful handling of complex passages all optimized at once—just as when you hear live music. Together, these qualities give a wonderful sense of freedom, letting you choose whatever music you wish, secure in the knowledge that the Fosgate will neither stumble nor become flustered no matter how complex or demanding the material might be.

Three other positive qualities worthy of mention are the Fosgate’s purity of timbre, its effortless soundstaging, and its neutral (yet thoroughly musical) tonal balance. For a good example of all three in action, try Bill Frisell’s Good Dog, Happy Man [Nonesuch, pressing from Pallas Diepholz, Germany], which offers a lovely marriage of traditional folk/bluegrass instrumentation and Frisell’s “acoustic and electric guitars, loops and music boxes”—all tilted in the direction of gentle, exploratory jazz. I’m particularly fond of the track “Shenandoah (for Jimmy Smith),” which features Frisell on acoustic guitar, guest artist Ry Cooder on electric guitar and Ripley guitar, Viktor Krauss on bass, and Jim Keltner on drums. This is, quite simply, one of those tracks so exquisitely beautiful and intricate you can get lost in it (in a good way), over and over again.

The Fosgate captures the at times very subtle voicing differences between Frisell and Cooder’s guitars (and playing styles), so that there’s never a moment’s doubt as to which player is which. More importantly, it effortlessly nails the ethereal and almost otherworldly lilt of Frisell’s guitar lines, setting them free from loudspeakers to float within the boundaries of an enormous 3-D soundstage. At the same time, the Signature tracks Keltner’s delicate and tastefully restrained percussion work, which gives the song its measured pulse. Down low, Krauss’ acoustic bass lines put a solid yet organic-sounding low-frequency foundation beneath the song, with notes that are appropriately dark, sonorous, and woody, yet taut when they need to be and that bloom in a deep and expansive way. On all of the instruments, you can hear inner details galore, so that the resulting ensemble sound is very accurately balanced, though in no way sterile, antiseptic, or “shrink-wrapped.” On the contrary, the Fosgate is vibrant and full of tonal colors—not because it has euphonic colorations, but because it sounds so utterly natural.

Like many of you, I’m intrigued by the idea—first put forward by our own Jonathan Valin—of using a “truth-to-beauty” continuum to characterize the personalities of fine audio components. Where does the Fosgate Signature fall on this continuum? I’m tempted to say it comes tantalizingly close (much as does Shelter’s magnificent Harmony MC phono cartridge) to landing smack-dab in the middle of the scale. If you twisted my arm a bit, I suppose I would say that it shades (but only just barely so) toward the “beauty” end of the spectrum, which to my way of thinking is almost always the smart way to compromise. But audiophiles seeking that extra “nth degree” of treble resolution that makes “truth-oriented” components sound so accurate should note that the Fosgate ships with “an extra 12AT7 tube that can be used in place of the 12AX7 in position three (V3) to give a slightly more detailed top end.” Personally, I found the Signature’s standard tube complement almost ideal for my purposes, but I encourage you to try the alternate tube to see how its sound matches up with your own tastes.

Is the Fosgate Signature the best phonostage ever? Probably not, given that there are many, many talented designers looking to push the envelope of what’s possible with analog sound, many of whom are developing phonostages more than twice the Fosgate’s price. But is the Fosgate one of the strongest performers available at the $2500 price point? It’s certainly the best one I’ve heard thus far, and by a not-subtle margin—meaning the Fosgate will offer all the performance some listeners will ever need or want. If you’ve wondered, as I sometimes have, if it is really worth the effort and cost to step up from a phonostage in the $1000 range to one at this higher level, the Fosgate provides great sounding answers that add up to a resounding, “Yes.”

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Sidebar: The Fozgometer Azimuth Range Meter—A Delightful Accessory for Vinyl Enthusiasts

As many of you will already have discovered, getting the azimuth (or axial tilt) adjustment of your phono cartridge just right is one of the keys to achieving spectacular 3-D soundstages. But how do you know when the settings are right? In the past, you had two basic options: You could check settings by eye and hope for the best, or you could buy a good test record and expensive test gear and go to work. Now, Fosgate’s new Fozgometer provides an ingenious and not too expensive ($250) solution, which is designed to be used in conjunction with The Ultimate Analogue Test Disc [Analogue Productions, AAPT 1].

The Fozgometer is very simple to use. You first go through your normal cartridge set-up routines, making adjustment as needed for overhang and horizontal cartridge alignment, tracking force, vertical tracking angle, and anti-skating (if any). After giving the cartridge about 40 hours of initial run-in time, you are ready to bring the Fozgometer into play.

Begin by plugging your phono leads into the Fozgometer and turning the Fozgometer on, and then play Track 2, Side 1 of The Ultimate Analogue Test Disc, which provides a 1kHz left channel test tone, and observe results. The left (red) signal direction light should come on, and the meter needle should swing upwards on the scale (which is arbitrarily numbered from 0 to 40). Note the readout value. Now repeat the process playing Track 3, Side 1 of the test disk (which provides a 1 kHz right channel test tone) and compare results. This time, the right (red) signal direction light should come on, and, ideally, the meter needle should provide the same readout value as the left channel did. If the readouts don’t match, azimuth adjustment is required.

If the right channel reading is higher than the left, then gently rotate the cartridge clockwise as viewed from the front; or, rotate the cartridge counter-clockwise if the right channel reading is lower than the left. Make very small adjustments and retest until you get readings that are identical—or very nearly so. Voilà, your azimuth settings are now spot on.

SPECS & PRICING

Fosgate Signature Phonostage Preamplifier
Type: Vacuum tube-powered phone preamplifier
Tube complement: Two 6DDJ8, two 12AX7, two 12AT7, and one 6X4 (also includes a spare 12AT7 tube that can be substituted for the 12AX7
Inputs and outputs: One stereo phono signal in (RCA), one stereo analog out (RCA)
Gain: 42 or 60dB
Loading options: 100 ohms, 300 ohms, 500 ohms, 1k ohm, 47k ohm, and 100k ohm
Capacitance: 50pF
Dimensions: 5.625” x 13.187” x 10.75”
Weight: 10 lbs.
Price: $2500

Fozgometer Azimuth Range Meter
Type: Analog azimuth adjustment meter
Inputs: Stereo phono signal in (RCA)
Indicators and controls: On/off switch, analog meter (needle type), signal direction lights (left/center/right)
Dimensions: 3.25” x 6.5” x 2.375”
Weight: Not specified
Price: $250

MUSICAL SURROUNDINGS
5662 Shattuck Ave.
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 547-5006
www.musicalsurroundings.com

ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT
Analog: Nottingham Analogue System Ace-Space 294 tonearm/Space 294 turntable; PS Audio GCPH and Sutherland Ph3D phonostages.
Digital: Musical Fidelity kW SACD player, Rega Isis CD player.
Amplification: Musical Fidelity kW500 and Rega Isis integrated amplifiers; NuForce P-9 preamplifier and Reference 9 v.3 Special Edition monoblock amplifiers
Speakers: YG Acoustics Carmel loudspeakers.
Headphones, etc.: HiFiMAN EF-5 headphone amplifier; Beyerdynamic DT-990, HiFiMAN HE-5LE planar magnetic, and Shure SRH-840 full-size headphones.
Cables: Furutech Alpha Reference and NuForce Focused-Field signal and interconnect cables; Furutech Alpha Reference power cables.
Power Conditioner & Acoustic Treatments: PS Audio Power Plant Premier power regenerator and Soloist in-wall power conditioner, RGPC 1200 power conditioner; Auralex Studiofoam and RPG B.A.D. (binary amplitude diffsorber) acoustic treatment panels.