Analog Gear News

Here’s another cool turntable and tonearm combo that caught our collective eye of late: namely, The Wand 14-5 turntable — which follows in the considerable wake of the New Zealand company’s deservedly vaunted 14-4 ’table — and The Wand Dark-Light tonearm, which follows their original, notable, and standard-named Tonearm. Both new products were shown at High End Munich 2023 back in May, and they will subsequently travel across the Pond to be shown at the upcoming Pacific Audio Fest in Seattle, which is being held June 23-25. Read on to learn why the 14-5 is likely to be a worthy successor to the 14-4 as well as why the Dark-Light is a formidable follow-up to The Wand Tonearm accordingly. . .

A few months back, we reported on the availability of Michael Fidler and Classic Audio’s latest and greatest PRO Series offering, the MM PRO phono preamp. But now, Fidler and company have duly brought forth the MC PRO phono preamp equivalent. Read on to see how the MC PRO rates in terms of your own phono-stage necessities. . .

Nope, we’re not done yet — hence, here’s another installment of our extended takes on some of the coolest gear seen and heard at High End Munich 2023. Today, we delve into all the great new Soundsmith cartridge and phono preamp offerings that were on display in the company’s always impressive booth (plus another notable item or two). Read on to find out more about the latest and greatest from the mind and hands of Soundsmith chief engineering domo Peter Ledermann and company. . .

Continuing with our highlighting of some of the coolest gear seen and heard at High End Munich 2023, we now turn our eyes and ears to Takumi’s TT Level 3.1 turntable, which was being auditioning in fine form as part of a top-shelf demo system consisting of a Moonriver Audio phono stage, Moonriver amplifiers, Aretai speakers, and Viablue cables. Read on to find out more about the new Level 3.1 turntable. . .

With High End Munich 2023 right around the corner, we’re already getting word about some of the cool new analog gear debuting at the show. One such item that’s caught our eye is Goldring’s new E4 moving magnet cartridge. Read on to see what you can expect to get with the flagship E4 MMC. . .

When we saw some cool Plinius gear in the system utilized for a Kuzma demo at AXPONA 2023, it reminded us that we needed to see what’s been going on with the vaunted New Zealand-born company of late — and thus, here we are with our eye firmly planted on the Plinius Koru phono preamp. Read on to get all the Koru spec details. . .

As we noted in our earlier video-centric post, AXPONA ruled Chicagoland large last week, and now we’re going to dive deeper into reporting on some of the truly amazing turntables and other cool analog gear we saw and heard in some of the listening rooms and expo-hall booths alike. Read on to see what our Julie Mullins found during Part 1 of her personal AXPONA adventure. . .