A long and slightly defensive argument in favour of buying a forty-year-old British integrated amplifier instead of anything that has been advertised to you in the last decade. With caveats.
Twelve weeks of daily listening to a turntable that — in stock form — most reviewers would not bother with. After a complete bearing rebuild and a new plinth, it is, embarrassingly, the best deck in the house.
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What happens when you put a pair of well-regarded bookshelf monitors in a room they were never designed for. Spoiler: mostly disappointing, but instructive about what a small speaker actually does.
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We spent eight weeks listening to four cartridges in the same arm, blind, with two listeners and a tea-break every forty minutes. The cheapest one won.
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A visit to a small club in the Midlands where members meet once a month to listen to pre-war 78 rpm records on the equipment they were originally meant for. Polite, considered, and slightly indignant.
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How a piece of mid-century domestic equipment got squeezed out of British sitting rooms — and what we lost when we agreed that hi-fi should be invisible.
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Half a working life later, the Studer is still in the corner of the studio, still calibrated, still used at least once a week. We spent an afternoon with him and the machine.
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