Turntable Reviews

With all due respect to Gem Dandy’s new PolyTable Signature “layer cake” of a “two tiered” turntable, the bigger news here is the Sorane TA-1L tonearm George Merrill chose to package with his new turntable. Why is the Sorane news? Because it’s the possible successor to now defunct Jelco. But first, the new $2995 (not including arm) turntable, which, for sure, is also news.

Let’s head off at the pass what will surely be in the comments section under this review of a remarkably compact, full-featured, remote-controllable music playback system that includes in a single box, a high quality Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Esprit 3 speed turntable with dustcover, fitted with an Ortofon 2M “Silver” cartridge (incorrectly identified as OM2 on the Andover website—it’s similar to the Ortofon 2M Red but with fewer winds of the same silver-plated copper wire found in Ortofon’s 2M Bronze and 2M Black) that alone sells for $599 and includes an acrylic platter and 8.6” carbon fiber tonearm, an A/D converter, a 192/24 bit DAC, analog and digital inputs plus a subwoofer “out”, Bluetooth ( Qualcomm APT-X) streaming and built in amplification (2 x 70 Class D watts to woofers and 2 x 30 watts to tweeters) and of course multiple (6) high quality speakers (4 “long throw” aluminum diaphragm woofers and a pair of Air Motion Transformer tweeters originally invented by Dr. Oskar Heil that uses metal-etched folded polyethylene sheets to move air in process we won’t go into here!).

Back in 1972 the original Thorens introduced the TD 160, a triple spring-suspended sub-chassis design that quickly became a long-in-production classic and the blueprint from which many other turntables, er, sprung—Linn for instance.

The original AR XA turntable designed by Edgar Villchur and introduced way back in 1961 for $58 was, to the best of my knowledge, the first to place the platter assembly and tone arm on the same sub-chassis isolated by a three point spring mount from the rest of the turntable (and from the outside world).

Cambridge Audio’s $1699 Direct-Drive Alva (named after Thomas Alva Edison) is not the first “plug’n’play turntable, but it’s the first serious, well-engineered one that combines set up ease with high performance, both mechanical and sonic. An added attraction is high resolution Bluetooth SBC [lowest resolution 320 bit MP3]/apt X/apt X HD [up to 24 bit/48kHz Hi-res] functionality that allows wireless connectivity to a Bluetooth loudspeaker or headphones.

Technics follows up on its successful re-entry into the turntable business (SL-1200 series, SP10R, SL1000R) with the SL1500C, a lower cost ($1199) direct drive turntable that features a version of the sophisticated coreless, single rotor direct drive motor used on its more costly turntables.

Pro-Ject’s Heinz Lichtenegger is not shy about expressing his contempt for el-cheapo turntables coming from China and elsewhere. He thinks these mediocre-sounding turntables ruin the sonic experience for a young generation getting into vinyl.

U.K. based Gearbox, best known for its restored vintage all-tubed Westrex mastering system (Haeco Scully lathe with Westrex RA1700 series amps, Westrex 3DIIA cutting head and Telefunken U73B tube limiter) and eclectic all-analog vinyl record catalog recently entered the hardware business with this cool “compact disc” player it calls “The Gearbox Automatic” though it’s a manual player.