Rega ramblings...

[_D_S_J_R_]

The thing is, the Planar 1 sells for £250 with good basic cartridge and i reckon that's got to be less in today's money than say, a Garrard SP25 (the Garrard was often offered at substantial discounts though by warehouses back in the day). The once popular Dual 505 model still exists at £450 now (was around a ton in the 80's I think). The Planar 1 sells in thousands a month apparently and I think non-Rega dealers can sell it. A Pioneer PL12 series deck must also be around Dual price now at least if it went back into mass production (approx. £45 discounted in 1974 and thousands sold per week in the UK alone).

Something else, selling Rega will never make a dealer a fortune. Some companies may well offer massive dealer margins, but not Rega. They're too cheap for the snootier Linn-Naim dealers to get an attitude on about them, but this is where their Reference range may have stumbled a bit, as no way would say, an isis/Osiris at six grand a pop ever be thought of in the same vein as a Naim 555 CD or equivalent separates amp system (how much was a 250/Hicap2/preamp these days? - pushing £9k I think without checking).

P.S. I believe Roy G did actually conceive and design the early Rega decks and the Naos speakers were his baby too (not sure how much of the ELA speakers were Rega, as Royd did some driver work at least and made an (inferior to us - sounded more 'wooden' as I remember) version of it. Sure it's Terry Bateman who does the electronics and the Jura at least had input from another young chap who may well have designed it. Roy G is another audio personality who can grate smugly as well as entertain/inform, but I do believe the designs were his originally (I don't know his original business partner though). Twenty years ago, the people at the factory one dealt with on a day to day basis were lovely, helpful and the old smug self-satisfaction had all but gone I remember. They had a good niche and the products never really gave trouble at all and if service was and still is needed, they usually take the customer's side, although as per the law, one goes to the dealer first as it's the dealer who took the money initially.

[Nigel]

I think Rega are fantastic. Great value and so helpful if any problems arise, even many years later.

Dave, what are your opinions regarding any of the Planar tweaks and so called upgrades? Do you remember one from years back called the Split Slab?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Roy Gandy never designed anything, his input was ears, a very important input. His original partner (forgotten his name) did the TT according to their own history, they have been very honest about it I believe.

[Alfi]

Tony Relph?

Alfi.

[_D_S_J_R_]

Ah, ok, regarding original design - ego's can make things seem otherwise I'll need to ask, but I've just been informed that possibly Tony Relf had left the company before the Planar 2 came along, so maybe RG developed the original Relf design as the Planar 2 did differ in arm, platter/hub and motor position over the original Planet deck?

More rambles while I calm down further from the madness known as the A12 from M25 to Ipswich...

As for third party add-ons for the turntables, I'm in two minds.. Fancy inner platters look good and hopefully the spindles are as good as the originals. The original hubs are a moulding where the top edge (that the platter sits on) and the driving edge are skimmed accurately (watching the glass platter, it used to run very true up and down), so a precision aluminium hub is a trimming really and not technically necessary imo. The later hubs are moulded accurately and not sure they have a subsequent machining operation for 'truth' in rotation and odd ones do get through that perhaps shouldn't. these are replaced quickly and without fuss if they do happen.

Bearing bodges are just that to me, sorry! The original brass housing plus steel ball (4mm?) offers VERY low friction and noise levels and no slop at all (-80db 'rumble' at least I gather from tests) so why people want to replace the ball with a harder ceramic or ruby one which then wears the spindle tip more I really don't know (lack of engineering knowledge - takes one to know one, but I was advised years ago about carefully matching the 'hardness' of bearing surfaces for minimum wear patterns) - the ceramic ball my P3 based 'Mule deck' came with was smaller than the steel original too.

Belts? the belt in this design has to isolate motor vibration as well as drive without excessive wow at the platter, which effs up piano notes for example. make the belt too stiff and the wow is improved but transmitted motor noise is increased a bit. Rega's 'white' belt seems a good compromise but increases the already slightly fast speed by all accounts, but if the deck has the Neo 24V supply, fine speed is possible to trim and bring into line and they even market a 30hz? battery strobe and disc for the purpose of doing this.

If the deck is fairly new, better in my opinion to upgrade to the next one up rather than bodge the hell out of your existing one, but many people get restless and want to 'improve' what they have, so what the eff do i know, or Rega for that matter...

The tonearms, here at least, are the biggest bone of contention. No doubt at all how good 'sounding' an R200 arm can be. Yep, it's basic and fixed height (fine for many decks though), but it has a decent tube material and good gravity loaded bearings as said before, so can be happily used with all manner of medium compliance cartridges these days. If the PL71 arm can track an SPU with counterweight addition, then so can a bloody R200 as the important parts are related if not the same I feel. I even ran my Decca Microscanner in mine, but there was a tendency to lateral 'shimmy' when playing, so not really ideal for reliability issues (Decca's fail for often no reason at all - any excuse to pack it in).

The RB series of tonearms seem to polarise opinion. On a Rega deck, they feedback less, so a plus point here. they also show a bland or innacurate cartridge more as it is and I still maintain that much of the early criticisms of these arms was the cartridge fitted quite often. The other thing is that the originals seem armboard material fussy and I repeat the Spacedeck was the first time I really heard an RB300 sing naturally and sweetly and the best back then were with a K9 (and K18) fitted as well as the slightly raw AT-F5 (now better F7). Just my vibes here and your feelings and experiences may well differ.. As for the third party bodges, OL have made a good business in wrecking (imo) what the RB arms can do so well, adding midrange 'zing' to liven things up (the Pro-ject 9CC does this according to HFW tests I've seen) and also in the early days, with bad finish on the add-on parts too, although this may well be much better now. people forget that Rega do 'better' arms over the RB300 models, with improved arm-tube finish, even more tightly toleranced bearings and better cabling, but people tend to forget that. CURRENT arms have a three-point screw fixing instead of the large single pillar nut they used before and you don't need to go bananas with tightening, this I'm sure helping the arm and armboard interface. Certainly, the RB330 and up can sound more funky than before while measuring even better, but that's my opinion of course.

Finally on the upgrade thang... I've done it a few times and if I can find the Youtube vid, I'll post the link to that as well. The 1 is great, neat and tidy. The 2 is perhaps not the most positive for me as the bias is fixed and this limits cartridge choice slightly - imo.. The current 3 is excellent (my main listening was with one fitted with a 2M Bronze and it was great to me and a friend has an AT F7 in his and loves it). The 6 isn't as 'demonstrative' on drum rim shots, cymbal crashes and so on, BUT, it's my view that distortion is lower and again to me, the 'expression' in the playing, often shown through subtle timbral/tonality changes as notes decay or a singer sings a melody, comes across better. Bass does seem a bit clearer too and I'm sure the massier platter contributes a lot to this.

The Planar 8 is a strange one. I'm told it eats an old LP12 alive and apparently a Spacedeck too (haven't a clue, but two dealer friends tell me this), it weighs next to nothing with platter removed (carry it with platter off gripping one of the plinth 'webs' in one hand) and does have an incredibly 'quick' way with percussion. I need to spend more time with one though and not just with the equally wild Apheta 2 cartridge.. I don't know the top model at all so can't comment, but apparently the ceramic platter is very expensive to create. The double belt brings the heavier platter to speed very quickly indeed, if not quite as smart as a top Technics. No slipping, juddering or sliding over a few seconds here... Although I believe the materials mightnot be cheap, you don't arf get a lot more 'metal' in a Gyrodek, although a Gyro tends to make the sound 'swim' a bit between the speakers, as if the image isn't 'locked down.' I've consistently heard this artefact over thirty odd years in different venues and samples, so not just one dem of one although one notable Gyro with Alphason 100S arm and Decca Export sample sounded absolutely bloody wonderful to me.

A note on motors. Like the Linn equivalents, these things can be noisy when new (rubbing and ticking noises) but it's my experience that they do quieten down after six months regular use and tend to stay that way thereafter. In fact, the first 48 hours use can bed in the motor bearings as well as a new belt too..

Can I go now please? :D Knackered and bewildered at some people's driving, not just mine either...

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

[davjam13]

More excellent reading,thanks.