Turntables up to £699
Project Genie mk3: £200
The RPM1 looks stunning and in many ways seems to redefine what is possible with
budget turntables. It’s sold as a package including arm and cartridge with an external
wall wart power supply, and the motor is free standing so isn’t coupled to the main
plinth -
The Genie is also available in Gloss Red (as pictured below), White and Gloss Black for £215.
The Lite is a special limited edition of the Apprentice turntable (see below) which has some changes to the bearing and drive belt enabling the cost to reduced to an incredibly low price point for a British made turntable. The rest of the ingredients are the same, from the Ortofon OM5E cartridge to tonearm and hinged acrylic dust cover. What’s more it can be upgraded to full Apprentice specification at any time. This model will only be available for a short while, so don’t hesitate to get you order in soon.
Edwards Audio Apprentice Lite turntable: £199.90
The RP1 is the replacement for the P1 turntable. This follows the same basic recipe of offering a purist turntable at a very reasonable price but features a few advances which I feel lift its performance well beyond its price range. The most obvious change is the new platter, this is made of phenolic resin, a quite fascinating material which has a feel not entirely dissimilar to bakelite (and I write that as a compliment), which is precisely moulded to have a fly wheel effect by concentrating the mass towards the perimeter.
The tonearm may look similar to its predecessor, but it’s been quite extensively reworked. Called the RB101 it features an new arm tube design and is carefully hand assembled to ensure great consistency. It will also be very easy to setup, simply push the counterweight on as far as it’ll go (see picture bottom right) to set the tracking force at the recommended weight for the supplied Ortofon OM5 cartridge (and because the standard supplied Ortofon OM5 is one of the lightest cartridges available this clever short cut will not limit you if you chose to upgrade the cartridge at a later date).
I can’t helping feeling this is simply a quite remarkable sounding deck. I feel the
platter dictates a lot of the decks character but almost wholly in a very positive
way (and this is written after trying out some alternative materials). It has a wonderful
openness and speed, with an immediate sounding mid band and low frequencies. ‘Bite’
and ‘snap’ were two words that kept coming to mind to describe the way the deck deals
with the leading edge of transients, which is remarkable at this price point.The
bass may not be the deepest (hardly relevant when used in most budget systems after
all) but what’s there is clean, well resolved, and very musical. I felt I detected
the (very) slightest sense of a plasticky colouration which can occasionally be apparent
on some acoustic instruments, but that’s being very picky, and given the strengths
apparent elsewhere is a very minor flaw in this otherwise exceptionally highly polished
product.
In short this simply doesn’t sound like a budget deck, if asked to price it based purely on its sound I would have not hesitated to pick a figure in excess of twice it’s actual cost, making this an exceptional performance bargain.
Rega RP1 turntable with cartridge in white, grey and ‘titanium’ silver: £230.
The Performance pack is a series of upgrades for the RP1 turntable featured above.
It is available either as a factory fitted model (and as such replaces the classic
P2 turntable) or as an upgrade kit for you or us to upgrade a standard RP1 to a higher
level of performance. The upgrades include a Rega Bias 2 cartidge which sounds richer,
more potent and refined than the Ortofon fitted as standard to the RP1, an upgraded
white drive belt (don’t snigger -
To make installation simple an alignment protractor is included and a sleeve provided which goes on in front of the counterweight which means the tracking force requires no other adjustment.
It is also now available in a special Union Flag finish as pictured below
Rega RP1 with Performance Pack in white, grey and ‘titanium’ silver: £298.00
Rega RP1 with Performance Pack in Union Flag livery: £329.00
Rega RP1 Performance Pack upgrade kit (does not include an RP1 turntable): £85.00
Project Debut S/E3
Finished in high gloss black, this latest iteration of the classic Debut recipe features a full size platter, tweaked motor mounting, new round cross section drive belt and an uprated cartridge (Ortofon OM10 Super). This deck has just arrived, this page will be updated shortly.
Project Debut S/E3 turntable: £250
Rega Planar R78
The Planar 78 is a mono, single speed turntable designed specifically for playback of 78rpm records only. A matching Rega mono RB78 cartridge is available, please see our cartridge section for more details.
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Edwards Audio Apprentice Turntable
The Apprentice is a new entry level turntable from Edwards Audio. Made in the UK, this design is a perfect example of a finely tweaked product whose resulting sound punches well above its price tag. The fine tuning has mainly centred around the bearing and drive assembly, a ceramic ball bearing and selected high performance oil are chosen to channel energy and damp it where necessary, which result in greater snap and focus to the sound. This is combined with a drive belt (called the ‘Little Belter’) chosen for its lack of elasticity and a low mass platter brings gains of speed stability and an overall solidity of sound. An Ortofon OM series cartridge completes the package and comes ready fitted, just push on the counterweight and you’re ready to play!
Edwards Audio Apprentice turntable with cartridge £299.95
The Project Carbon combines the value for money underpinnings of the classic Debut
turntable design with a beautifully made tonearm made whose tube and headshell is
made from woven carbon fibre. To top it off the Ortofon 2M Red cartridge completes
the package -
Available in Gloss Black, White, Red Yellow, Green, Silver and Blue
Project Debut Carbon turntable package: £300.00
The TT1 is Edwards Audio’s first turntable and is designed to offer great sound at
a very reasonable price. This deck is made in the UK and is the result of much experimentation
and auditioning -
The design features a Rega cast tonearm which is optionally factory fitted with a
Goldring Elektra cartridge -
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The RP3 is the latest in the long and distinguished line of decks from Rega that have evolved from the classic Planar 3. The new version features a few new developments, most obvious is the what Rega call their Double Brace Technology (DBT). This takes the form of two pieces of phenolic resin that join the main bearing to the tonearm both above and below the plinth, as shown below with the platter and hub removed:
And in the picture below of the underside of the deck:
The DBT stiffens the lightweight plinth in the important areas without adding much
mass (their mantra is “Mass absorbs energy -
The changes don’t stop there, the tonearm is a new design called the RB303. It features an entirely new casting for the arm tube which aims to reduce mass from the headshell end whilst increasing rigidity and is the result of the latest CAD & CAM technology which is especially evident with the much smoother shaping of the bearing housing assembly, shown in the picture below:
The sound of the RP3 is a clear improvement over its (already excellent) predecessor.
Quite which of the changes is attributable is difficult to say at this stage, but
the area that stands out the most is the improved transient resolution -
As with the previous model the turntable can easily be upgraded with the external
TT-
Finishes available: Titanium (as pictured above), Grey or White.
Rega RP3 turntable excluding cartridge: £475
Rega RP3 with Rega Elys 2 cartridge package price: £549
Rega RP3 with Rega Elys 2 cartridge package in Union Flag livery: £579.00
The TT2 is a very highly evolved version of the TT1 (featured above). The changes
start with the bearing, which now features a unique aluminium hub which runs upon
a sapphire ball bearing and lubricated by a specially high performance oil. Like
all elements of the deck, even the drive belt material was chosen through extended
listening. To top it off a rigid under-
Edwards Audio TT2 turntable without cartridge: £499.95
Edwards Audio TT2 turntable with cartridge: £599.95
Michell TecnoDec
The TecnoDec is the entry level Michell Turntable. It shares a lot of design elements with the more expensive Gyro SE, including a free standing DC motor (pictured below left), an acrylic/vinyl composite platter and oil pumping inverted bearing making it something of a bargain. As you’d expect from Michell it is beautifully engineered and very easy to setup and use thanks to its lack of suspension. The deck can be upgraded by the use of the Michell HR power supply (please see the power supply page for more details). The armboard (pictured below right) is a Rega cut and will accept both the original single point and newer 3 point fixings, and can be supplied with or without a range of tonearms, as priced below.
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