LATEST ADDITIONS

In a July 2nd story, we announced four new costly arms from SAT(Swedish Analog Technologies): two models each available in 9" and 12" versions. The least expensive of the four, the LM-09 was reviewed in the just shipped October, 2018 Stereophile.

I first spotted this chrome-trimmed beauty in the UK a few years ago, when Avid still had no American importer. The opportunity to review it finally arose last January, right after CES, and while I still had the SME 30/2 turntable. The $10,000 Avid Acutus is every bit as deserving of a full review as the 30/2—I am reviewing it in "Analog Corner" only because this is my best chance of getting a review into print so soon after my March 2003 report on the SME.

Gillian Welch's fourth album originally released in 2003 on CD-only finally gets an AAA release, cut by Stephen Marcussen on the Ortofon VMS-80 cutting system Welch and partner Dave Rawlings bought and restored. Now that's progress!

If you'd asked me 10 years ago to predict where a purveyor of mostly analog gear would be throwing a party at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show, I probably would have said Denny's—not the the elegant Presidential Suite atop the Mandalay Bay, the Las Vegas strip's most formal hotel. Yet that's where Jerry Raskin's Needle Doctor shared the analog wealth with the press and the industry during one cocktail hour at last January's Show.