I'VE JUST LISTENED TO £250,000-WORTH OF TURNTABLES AND THIS IS WHAT I LEARNED

Technical editor Ketan Bharadia finds that differing engineering philosophies can all yield great results

- Ketan Bharadia

The past few months have been a real treat for me. Due to a serendipitous sequence of circumstances, much of my time has been spent in the company of some interesting and rather exotic record players.

The most modest was the new Rega Planar3/Nd3 combination (£799). Now, the Planar 3 deck is about as well known as specialist record players get, having been in production for almost 50 years. Over that time it has consistently remained one of our go-to recommendations at its price – and this latest package simply reinforces that. It remains as musically talented a turntable as we have heard at this level. That its price remains unchanged from the previous Planar 3/Elys 2 package is also laudable.

Thank you for the days…

Next up the price ladder comes Linn’s ‘entry-level’ LP12 Majik partnered with the company’s Koil MC cartridge (£3935). This is a good starting point on the LP12 ladder and delivers a decent dose of the legendary deck’s magic. Our main comparison for the Linn was the Award-winning Vertere DG-1S/Magneto combination (£3950), but at the same time, we also had the mighty SME Model 20 Mk2/Series V arm/Ortofon Windfeld Ti MC package (£30,349) ready for review. As a team, we spent some entertaining days swapping between the Linn, Vertere and SME, as well as our reference Technics SL-1000R/Kiseki Purpleheart MC record player (£21,494), before forming our opinions on the review products.

Good as all these record players are, the highlight has got to be the all-too-short time I spent listening to a system fronted by Wilson Benesch’s new Prime Meridian Turntable. This comes partnered with the company’s Graviton Ti Arm and Tessellate Ti-S cartridge. At the time of writing, this package weighs in at a frankly astonishing £203,000. And it isn’t even Wilson Benesch’s rangetopper…