HiFiction Thales TTT-Slim II turntable & Simplicity II tonearm
Money, that unreliable buyer of happiness, has at times proven effective at delivering good sound. It can buy other things, as well: Audiophiles can swap cash for products that function as objets d'art, as status symbols, or even as canny investments.
Butdo you think money can buy peace of mind for the audio enthusiast who frets over binding voice-coils, leaking capacitors, drifting resistor values, oxidizing connectors, aging or incorrectly biased tubes, and that most pernicious worry of all, distortion and premature record wear from incorrectly aligned phono cartridges? Sadly, most of those neuroses, some quite reasonable, remain unaddressed by cash almighty.
Immedia RPM2 turntable
Okay, what does a turntable look like? Take your time—I'll wait. Dum de dum de dum dum dum... Oh, you're tired of this game already?
J.Sikora Aspire record player
Not to toot our own horns, but Stereophile magazine's reviews of the J.Sikora Initial, Reference, and Standard Max Supreme turntables helped catapult the Polish manufacturer into the audiophile spotlight.
J.Sikora Standard Max Supreme turntable, KV9 Max Zirconium tonearm
In his review of the J.Sikora Initial turntable, Stereophile's resident artist/sage Herb Reichert wrote, "Extended bathing, lighting candles, making tea, and preparing food are ritual work forms that prepare my senses to accept both pleasure and illumination."
When it comes to playing records, I too have a ritual. It involves carefully cleaning the vinyl, first on a Pro-Ject VC-33, followed by immersion in a HumminGuru Ultrasonic vinyl cleaner. Before and after, I inspect the record's grooves with a pricey VisibleDust Quasar R magnifier. Only thenblack coffee hot, glasses cleaned, stylus brushed free of contaminants, notepad at handam I ready to receive the messages ingrained in a shiny black vinyl disc.
Kuzma Stabi R turntable
I've been the proud owner of a Kuzma Stabi S turntable and Stogi S tonearm since 2001. The combination was an impulse purchase, made after seeing and hearing it in action at Stereophile's Home Entertainment Show at the New York Hilton. Even under unruly show conditions, the Kuzma player created rock-solid images and played music with serious jump factor. With its matte brass finish, tubular bell looks, and overtly industrial design, the Slovenian-made Stabi S/Stogi S was steampunk before steampunk. Looking back, it was one of my best-ever audio purchases.
Kuzma Stabi turntable & Stogi tonearm
I first learned of the Kuzma Stogi at the 1993 Winter CES in Las Vegas. In VPI's room at the Sahara, a portly, black tonearm was sitting proudly atop the new VPI TNT Series 3 turntable. Pointing straight at me from the center of its massive, exceptionally stout frame was a tapered armtube the diameter of a swollen thumb. The fact that this unknown (to me) tonearm was chosen to sit atop a turntable as respected as the TNT told me I was looking at a serious new product. VPI's Harry Weisfeld was standing nearby, beaming as usual, to answer the barrage of questions that sprang from my lips as I leaned over for a closer inspection. Who? What? Where? When? Why? How much?
Kuzma Stabi XL turntable & Air Line tonearm
Almost immediately on entering the analog marketplace in 1982, Franc Kuzma, a mechanical engineer based in Slovenia, then part of the former Yugoslavia, established a reputation for manufacturing finely engineered, high-performance products that sold at reasonable prices. Kuzma's early industrial designs, however, while serviceable, looked less than distinguished.
Linn Ekos SE tonearm, Keel LP12 subchassis, & Trampolin turntable base
Visit www.stereophile.com and look at the Vote">http://cgi.stereophile.com/cgi-bin/showvote.cgi?522">Vote Results for June 17, 2007: You'll see that when we asked our readers to name the one audio product that's spent the greatest amount of time in their systems, the most common answer by far was the Linn">http://www.stereophile.com/turntables/1103linn">Linn Sondek LP12 turntable (footnote 1). Little wonder that Scotland's most famous record player endures as an object of attention for various and sundry commercial tweaks.
Linn Klimax LP12 Record-Playing System
Playing records is a delight-filled chore. The simple, quiet act of lowering a tonearm places one's mind at the ready for something marvelous to happen. Surely, this gentle ritual initiates a higher mode of psychic connectedness than poking absentmindedly at a side-facing equilateral triangle on a piece of cheap plastic.
Linn LP Playing System
Long before the Swedes at Ikea did it, the singular Scotsman Ivor">http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1101ivor/">Ivor Tiefenbrun began giving his products funny-sounding names. For some reason positively phobic about the letter c, he banned its use in any of those names. Someone once told me his real last name is Tiefencrun, but since it wouldn't sound any different with a k, he settled for a b. "I could have been Ivor Tiefendrun, or Tiefenfrun, or Tiefengrun, for that matter," he's quoted as having said once while krunching a krakker.