Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

Despite its importance in the family tree, Pro-Ject’s original Debut turntable – pictured below and launched in 1999 [HFN Jul ’00] – does not mark the beginning of the brand’s story. Nine years earlier Heinz Lichtenegger, an entrepreneurial Austrian retailer and distributor, was on the lookout for a good quality but very affordable turntable for his customers. He took a fact-finding trip across the Czech border to visit the once state-owned Tesla factory in Litovel, near Prague. Trawling through its archives, he happened across the Gramofon Tesla NC 500, a single-speed turntable designed in the 1970s. Inspired, he set up a collaborative venture to produce a two-speed derivative of the NC 500 called the ‘Pro-Ject 1’, a belt-driven deck with an AC motor mounted within a rubber suspension at the back of the plinth. It’s a formula that can be traced right through to many current Pro-Ject models, including the new Debut Reference 10 featured here.

That original Debut deck, meanwhile, featured an MDF plinth and required the top platter to be removed to access the motor pulley for 33.3/45rpm speed change. It was equipped with a straight tonearm and an Ortofon OM5E pick-up but the platter was fashioned from mild steel – not ideal if this supplied MM cart was later upgraded to an MC (with far stronger internal magnets). An alloy platter quickly followed, but the Debut series was already off the launchpad. PM