Sam Tellig

"We like to make things," Roy Gandy, Rega's founder and owner, once told me. "It's what we do." Or maybe it was Rega's chairman and chief engineering honcho, Terry Bateman. Rega products are designed and manufactured in the south of England. So far as I know, no one at the Rega facility, on the Temple Farm Industrial Estate, has committed suicide; the same cannot be said of workers at the factory in China where iPods are made. Al Gore is on the board of Apple. Al, what do you think?

Forty years ago, when I first had money enough to buy serious [ahem] consumer audio, there were a few good turntables available, from Thorens, Garrard, Ariston, some others. Today is the golden age of turntables: ask Mikey, if not antiquarian Artie. And loudspeakers! In 1970, models were few, and most were mediocre. Today, you can have a great loudspeaker for a song.

If you have more than six or seven bucks to spend, you might consider the Imagine T floorstanding speaker from PSB Loudspeakers ($2000/pair). A year ago, John Atkinson reviewed PSB's Synchrony One speaker ($4500/pair; Stereophile, April 2008, Vol.31 No.4). The Imagine series is the next line down, and also includes center, surround, and bookshelf models. John Marks flipped over the Imagine B minimonitor in his column in the February 2009 issue.

Not being fond of self-flagellation, I don't usually do analog. I am not a fuddy-dudley, nor am I especially fremerous.