Analog Gear News

Music Hall's always cheerful Roy Hall introduced a new budget-priced $299 three-speed belt-drive turntable that includes among its many features electronic speed control, a built-in switchable MM phono preamp, a dustcover, as well as an Audio-Technica AT3600L cartridge.

Clearaudio manufactures an unusually wide range of turntable and tone arm models. In all the years I've attended C.E.S. or Munich for that matter, no one lays it all out (at the very least the lines imported to America by Musical Surroundings) so clearly and precisely as does Musical Surroundings' Customer Service Manager Michael Fajen in this video.

Pro-Ject had two rooms at CES 2017. One included a few prototypes and special "one-off" designs, including one for the band Wilco and one for Best Buy/Magnolia currently available, produced for Ron Howard's Beatles film.

Japan-based DS Audio introduced at CES 2017 its latest optical cartridge design, the DS002 at an attractive $5000 price point. The DS002 places the optical sensor in front of the elastomer suspension, which should produce faster response analogous to Audio-Technica's ART1000 cartridge that puts the coils on top of the stylus (not that there's really an comparison to be made between a coil and magnet based generator and one that uses an LED and optical shutter to generate a voltage).

Gearbox Records, best known as a mastering studio equipped with a vintage tube-based cutting system, announces an innovative new turntable with built-in vacuum tube-based phono preamp and auto-Bluetooth streaming.

Do you need to see more pressing plants go online to be convinced that the vinyl resurgence is surging? How about this: Furnace Record Pressing in Fairfax Virginia will soon go "live" with ten fully rebuilt Toolex Alpha presses.