Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

Launched by Divine Audio’s head honcho Tim Chorlton and Mark Groom, and with power supplies designed by Garrard guru Martin Bastin, Analogue Works is a new turntable manufacturer that brings plenty of experience to the table, which has been ploughed into the company’s carefully crafted rangeof record players and accessories. The One is positioned slap bang in the middle of the company’s record player range, sensibly sandwiched between the Zero (£650) and Two (£1,600) models. All three decks get the same bronze/steel bearing and the Zero also packs a Rega RB202 arm within its price, but gets a bamboo or MDF plinth and wall-wart PSU in place of the One’s birch-ply plinth and standalone PSU. The cheaper Zero also comes equipped with an acetal platter instead of the more substantial damped alloy platter sported by the One and Two decks.

Michell Engineering GyroDec SE Full spring suspension and a competitive performance makes the Michell a strong contender. . . This deck is relatively unusual these days in that it includes a full spring suspension, which in turn is rare in using springs in tension rather than compression.

Clearaudio Performance SE This turntable’s simplicity belies some refined engineering technology and a performance to match The latest incarnation of the Clearaudio Performance is a more substantial turntable than it looks, thanks to a plinth that’s made from a sandwich of aluminium and HDF. You can’t see the highdensity fi breboard because it is framed by the natural coloured aluminium in the sandwich, but it performs the critical task of damping any resonance that manages to get through the three adjustable feet beneath it. The platter is a 40mm slab of acrylic that sits on a ceramic magnetic bearing, the shaft of which has been polished to an even higher degree than on the original Performance. The magnetic suspension means that the ceramic shaft doesn’t need a ball bearing or thrust pad to take the weight of the platter, which should reduce noise from this critical component quite considerably.

Pro-Ject RPM10. 1 Despite its low price, the RPM10. 1 has more features than most, including a carbon-fibre tonearm We looked at the RPM10. 1 back in HFC 348 and found a lot to like in its high-mass, magnetically isolated design.

VPI Classic A lot of turntable for the asking price, here’s an impressive package from a classic American manufacturer The VPI is a lot of turntable for the money, it’s easily the biggest and heaviest in this group and if that weren’t enough, it has the longest tonearm in the JMW10. 5i. The latter is an elaborate unipivot design, with balance weights around the pivot point that can be rotated so that the stylus sits upright in the groove. VTA variations are accommodated with a substantial stainless wheel on the arm base.

Are you Xperienced? Pro-Ject has added a unipivot to its Xperience turntable. Ed Selley cues up Pro-Ject seems intent on creating a turntable to suit absolutely everybody and its range is expanding on a seemingly daily basis. The classic decks, of which the entry-level 2-Xperience Basic+ is now a part, sits somewhere above the Essential and Debut ranges and runs parallel to the RPM series. Beefed up The deck itself looks more like a beefed-up Debut, than a member of the RPM series.

Tiny Temper Die-hard LP12 fans have found a new haven in Well Tempered. Jason Kennedy looks at the entry-level Simplex, complete with silicone damping There are some radical turntable designs in the glorious world of analogue audio, but very few comparable to a Well Tempered product. The Simplex was first developed in the early eighties and this new entry-level turntable is still the least expensive in the Well Tempered range. The design, unlike all other turntables, doesn’t have mechanical arm bearings; instead the arm pivots on a silicone-damped golf ball that hangs from a nylon filament thread.