Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

For a Decca worshipper of 47 years, its return via the London Decca Reference Type II (£7702) is miraculous. Reviving these oddball cartridges has involved a tortuous learning curve as the last generation of craftsmen transferred the ‘technology’ to the firm’s new owners. Even securing the name required negotiation, as the Decca record label has also recently returned.

The Pye Black Box hi-fi record player was a milestone design which seems to have touched the lives of everyone involved in audio from the mid-1950s to the mid-’60s. It arrived at a time when quality listening was becoming a pursuit in itself but much of the equipment on the market was too complicated for the non-technically minded user. The Black Box, on the other hand, made everything simple – all you had to do was to put it somewhere, plug it in and off it went. At a time when even FM radio was a thing of the future its performance was a revelation. If you were a music lover who wanted something small and neat you simply had to have one.

Perhaps hoping to replace the much-loved but-now-in-limbo Koetsu, fellow Japanese brand Analog Relax has developed into a range of five ‘artisan’ moving-coil cartridges. The EX700 sits exactly in the middle, above the EX500 and below the EX1000, at a no longer shocking £7288. Stop here if you find the pricing of cartridges (and cables) has no bearing on reality, but that’s now mid-priced for the high-end, whether we like it or not.

For a brand that’s a relatively new name to the hi-fi industry, Hana is already making big waves in the vinyl community. With four distinct cartridge ranges (moving-coil only) comprising the E, S and M models in both high- and low-output versions and topping out in the Umami series, it previously had options covering a price range of £419 to £3399. However, that selection has now been crowned by a no-compromise flagship, the £7995 Umami Black.

It can be difficult for a manufacturer to successfully span a wide price range. History reveals a handful that have come unstuck by either trying to move upmarket from affordable roots, or attempting to develop trickle-down versions of expensive designs. However, those companies that get it right across the board tend to find themselves very popular, and Pro-Ject’s new £10,599 Signature 12.2 is the latest offering from a brand that is a master of the art.

It never hurts to have a sibling manufacturer making phono stages when you’re also offering cartridges. Better still is having a range of tonearms and turntables in the family, too. In this case, the oh-so-Britishly-named Kensington Audio can boast being part of the Talk Electronics group, along with Edwards Audio and Kestrel Audio, so its quintet of cartridges is in good company.

Although we might conveniently ‘pigeonhole’ turntables into idler-drive, belt-drive and direct-drive types, there are subdivisions within each category. For example, idler wheels come in different orientations and might drive the outside, the inside or even the underside of the platter. Belt-drive decks can use DC, AC or induction motors and spin the platter through a flat, square or round belt, a nylon thread or even, in one example, a triangular belt!