Out with the old black steel - in with the Glass

[Paul Williams]

For some 15 years my Turntable and/or CD Player/Amplifier have sat on Target equipment supports. The importance of these supports was brought home to me when I came away from a dealer many years ago with one of these supports and an expensive cartridge to try on my Linn – the cartridge went back and I kept the table as this gave a higher level of improvement to the sound (at very much less cost). That was then, today, I’m somewhat less concerned with squeezing the last drop of quality out of my system and would always sacrifice some sound quality for better build quality. Anyway, last week I was looking at this mass of black metal and wood, thinking, “I need something better looking and an all in one unit”. Checked out the usual audio furniture manufacturers/retailers and thought that most were far too expensive or just plain ugly and decided to stick with what I had. A few days later whilst walking through the furniture department of a local store a rather nice glass and tubular ‘entertainment unit’ caught my eye – 30 minute later it was in the car (well the flat pack box anyway). That night I assembled it and did the exchange – looked really nice – I left off the nice resonant backing plates though. So the moment of truth lowered the needle into the groove, sat back and listened to………well I was quite taken aback. The soundstage was small; the sound had lost quite a bit of focus. Tonally not bad, but I couldn’t live with this miniature view into my records, so there ensued a couple of hours of speaker positioning and tweaking and all to no avail. Now remember we’re talking of replacing Target stands here – not exactly cutting edge stuff! Anyway, thanks to the design of the turntable and being able to change the feet from a rubber/plastic ring supported to the embedded ball bearing I’m now back to perhaps 95% of where I was before. Given the much cleaner looks of this new support that’s OK with me, but I know I’m going have to start auditioning tables again soon, much to the bemusement of my wife.

Paul