Analog Gear News

Happy 2024, everyone! We here at AnalogPlanet central hope you all had a great holiday season, and are ready to tackle a new year ahead that is sure to be met with many great gear and LP options for us all to peruse, review, discuss, and share together. In the meantime, I want to look into something that was mentioned briefly in passing in a story we posted back in December — Groovetracer subplatters. Read on to see more about Groovetracer’s way-cool subplatter options, as well as their other accessories of interest. . .

Still thinking about getting a new turntable for the holidays? Gold Note may have just what you need. Read on to see all the features and specs for the Italian manufacturer’s latest, the quite classy and affordable T-5 turntable. . .

While looking over all the great gear that was on display at last month’s Capital Audiofest (CAF), we saw quite a number of products we earmarked for looking into further after the show beyond the coverage we already had planned for our various CAF show reports. One of them, Fern & Roby’s Montrose Heirloom turntable, is today’s deep-dive subject, so read on to see what this supercool ’table manufactured in Richmond, Virginia, is all about. . .

Welcome to another installment of analog highlights from Capital Audiofest (CAF), which was held November 10-12, 2023, at the Twinbrook Hilton in Rockville, Maryland. As we noted last week in Part 1, CAF has expanded to a reported 114 exhibit rooms across more than four floors in addition to various conference rooms throughout the hotel. Read Part 2 of Julie Mullins’ comprehensive show report to duly digest a second helping of the best analog gear CAF 2023 had to offer. . .

Pangea Audio has just announced the soon-forthcoming Record Doctor X, a new edition of their acclaimed Record Doctor vacuum record cleaning machines that simultaneously cleans both sides of a record in order to “sav[e] time and effort over current versions” (their words). Read on to see if the all-new RDX VRCM fits your own current and/or future record cleaning needs. . .

“Scandinavian design with an international twist.” So says notable Danish company Aavik Acoustics about their R-580 phono preamp, so we figured we’d take a closer look at this cool unit before we head on into the extended holiday weekend ahead. Read on to get all the R-580 specs and feature details. . .

While we’re waiting to upload some first-hand reports from the intrepid AP team that attended this past weekend’s Capital Audio Fest, we thought we’d take a moment to look at some new top-shelf moving magnet (MM) cartridges from Ortofon. The Danish company just announced seven additions to their vaunted 2M series — namely, seven new MM carts specifically designated as 2MR. Read on to see what’s in the feature set for the 2MR series as a whole as well as each respective SRP for Ortofon’s fine new MM cartridge array. . .