Mike Mettler

We’ve always loved the level of craftsmanship that goes into the making of all the various turntables and tonearms that emerge from the mind and hands of Helmut Brinkmann and how well they consistently perform on the bench and in listening tests, but we’ve never given proper due to the German company’s best-selling Taurus turntable — until right now, that is. Read on to see how the Brinkmann Taurus ’table and its optional RöNt Mk III vacuum tube power supply go together like (insert your own perfect analog-oriented analogy here). . .

For those of you who have a penchant for listening to visceral, tall-in-the-saddle sonic tales recounting the finer points of dental floss farming, mindless video drones, and poncho-wearing lotharios, then we have an important release announcement for you. Namely, Frank Zappa’s seminal September 1973 LP Over-Nite Sensation is getting a proper 50th anniversary deluxe reissue treatment via a pair of vinyl options — a 180g 45rpm 2LP set, and a limited-edition splatter-vinyl 180g 3LP edition — both via Zappa Records/UMe on November 3. Read on to see all the mennil-toss flykune-approved ONS 50 pressing stats and sugar-plum tracks accordingly. . .

New Jersey-based VPI Industries are quite well-known for their rightly vaunted lines of high-quality turntables and tonearms respectively, but when they decided to get into the cartridge engineering universe, they turned to Audio-Technica for the manufacturing assist. Read on to find out what’s what with one of VPI’s latest MC cart offerings, the Goldy moving coil cartridge. . .

We’re always on the lookout for great, current turntable options at various price levels, more often than not with an eye toward what we consider to be relatively affordable options these days. With that in mind, we wanted to look at what’s what with the vaunted British company Vertere — and thus, we’ve taken to eyeballing their DG-1S turntable, which is currently available in three different configurations. Read on to find out what each Vertere DG-1S ’table entails, and what their respective SRPs are. . .