The Rega planar 3 turntable rightly deserves its legendary status. I have the delight to borrow one for a short while and I am shocked.
Let’s back up. My turntable is a Technics SLQ-303 direct player, loving maintained since 1981. The gold ring E3 cart has been a very solid performer and vinyl has been spinning in house for years with huge enjoyment.
Charles Audio has several phono preamp projects in the pipeline and the last addition, (The Emerald) has significantly reduced “warmth” and increased transparency and soundstage (aka very low distortion).
All good until I went to play a record last week and the platter only sped up! The heatwave, or simply age may be the cause.
Gerry very kindly lent me his Rega P3. With a very capable Ortofon Black MM cart – we plugged in and sat back.
Immediately, the modern low rumble, low noise floor was evident before the track started.
Then sheer bliss – we had goose bumps – the players are in the room – the soundstage went to the side of the room – every instrument is perfectly etched. We are transported to the studio. Wow!
I have 3 particular test albums I know very well and each added to these experience. New Gold Dream – Simple Minds, Luck & Strange – Dave Gilmore and Tears for Fears – Seeds of Love.
Sound Quality
- Transparent, spacious, clear, open, 3D, defined instruments, neutral sound balance, deep bass
- Engaging, moving, convincing, joyful…
It’s so exciting to know that engineering done well brings such a wonderful musical experience! Rega’s philosophy of simplicity, stiffness and low mass to ensure every vibration is faithfully reproduced – just delivers exactly that.
I am so glad to be spinning discs again.
Coming up
Project coming up: Wayne Colborne’s Pearl 3 phono -preamp. Wayne works for Pass Audio and serves up >$10k gear for a living. This one he has gifted to the open source HiFi community for free. This is novel FET front end, Op Amp back end for an ultra low noise, distortion design.
I have boards, a cabinet and the power supply ready to go. This autumn we can talk about how it sounds.
Please let me know if you want to hear more about all this!
Leave a comment