Sigh again...Daniel Quinn wrote:Deck first is flat earth ideology.
I am curious dsjr. I presume you would put moving coil on a rega rp6. What is different about this deck.
Additionally. I am certain rega rp6 with a Benz ace in it would beat any turntable with an at95e in it.
First, WITH VINYL, you need to get the turntable behaving properly before the tonearm is considered and the cartridge cannot perform properly if the previous two are not up to it. Digital is slightly different ime, as for years, cheap digital can perform superbly if you select carefully.
The Fons was another Hamish Robertson design I believe, but this was before the days when people realised how important the turntable was as regards sound quality, let alone having master recordings with which to compare - this was one reason (jazzbones) why I despaired of Linn, as they of all people KNEW how atrocious the pre Cirkus LP12 was as they were easily able to compare the record as played on an LP12 system to the master recording used to cut the acetate originally!! The Fons CQ30 has a one piece platter which rings like a bell, even with the later stick-on rubber 'mat' pieces. The arm boards I remember being easily bent soft metal stampings, although the earliest may have been wooden - we're talking 1975 here and I can't remember now. The suspension used a double spring arrangement, one above and one below the sub-chassis, but all it did was to raise the bounce frequency into an ill-damped 'quiver' as I remember. Finally, the electronically controlled motor had little torque and slowed under load with some offshoot as I recall. Ariston took over the design later on and tarted it up a little, but it performed poorly under test I remember...
Yes, a late 70's Rega Planar 3 could out-perform a Fons quite comfortably if it was sited properly in all but one area, the Rega runs slightly too fast. We/I used to spend hours on setting up Thorens 160's, getting a pristine bounce and dressing the cables right, even using better arm-boards - then MDF - over the plastic one supplied. A stock Planar 2 would annihilate them in musical terms. I appreciate it's only words based on memories now, but it would have been easy to hear at the time.
As for current Rega's, I'm not the one to ask, as I love them all, but I have two friends, one is Alfafan here, who have been from RP1 to RP6, then back to RP1 and up to RP8, finally giving up and returning happily (in Alfafan's case) to an RP1, which appears better finished than ever now. I am working on a 'mule' P3 chassis, to which I'll be trying my old R200 arm, but that's a long term thing as cheap parts become available for it (£60 for a float-glass platter indeed!)
. Oh and the LP12 is definitely coloured with a bloomy effect to the sound, most evident in the bass but it effects the whole audio band.
