Mike Mettler

While looking over all the great gear that was on display at last month’s Capital Audiofest (CAF), we saw quite a number of products we earmarked for looking into further after the show beyond the coverage we already had planned for our various CAF show reports. One of them, Fern & Roby’s Montrose Heirloom turntable, is today’s deep-dive subject, so read on to see what this supercool ’table manufactured in Richmond, Virginia, is all about. . .

So many great new products to be seen at the most recent Capital Audiofest (CAF), so little time. Well, that’s not entirely true, as our intrepid analog-centric editorial team spent quite a lot of time on the case at CAF 2023. That said, there’s some additional gear that was on display at CAF we wanted to take a deeper dive into, one of those items being DS Audio’s Grand Master EX optical cartridge. Read on to see what the impressively high-end Grand Master EX cart has to offer. . .

Pangea Audio has just announced the soon-forthcoming Record Doctor X, a new edition of their acclaimed Record Doctor vacuum record cleaning machines that simultaneously cleans both sides of a record in order to “sav[e] time and effort over current versions” (their words). Read on to see if the all-new RDX VRCM fits your own current and/or future record cleaning needs. . .

Last week, Capital Audiofest ruled large in the Washington, DC area, and I anointed our main product reviewer Ken Micallef to shoot as much video footage as he could of all the cool turntables and other analog-centric gear and goodies he came across at the show. CAF offered “a world of vinyl, gadgets, turntables, amplifiers, loudspeakers, and the mad audiophiles who love them,” Ken noted in a caption underneath the 16-minute video he posted for us on YouTube that you can now watch in the story below. . .