Want to know how to test a newfangled turntable already acknowledged as having established technology that can’t really be reinvented? Plug it in and wind it up, literally.
Starting a Palmer turntable requires you to interact with it, much like winding a mechanical watch. ‘It soon becomes second nature to spin the platter with just the right amount of force so that it is running to speed instantly,’ says British designer Jon Palmer.
Like a fine watch movement, the rather ‘unfashionable’ AC synchronous motors find the delicate balance between drag and inertia. Trusted for their proven ability as ‘very good timekeepers’ (the motors are used to power clocks and medical equipment accurately), they rely solely upon the frequency with which they are provided and cannot deviate from it.
The Absolute Sound’s reviewer Paul Seydor found that the new Palmer 2.5 ‘executed to the nines in each of its aspects’. ‘Tracking was outstanding, surface noise and all the other detritus of vinyl well suppressed. Whatever Palmer was up to here, in the 2.5 he translated it into listening experiences of beauty, precision, clarity and power.’ His Carmen (Bernstein/Deutsche Grammophon) played as ‘big, bold, and blazingly colourful as it should be’, while Duke Ellington’s Piano in the Foreground had a ‘startlingly reach-out-and-touch-it presence’.
The Palmer 2.5 is manufactured two at a time on an order-only basis.
For more information, call 021 418 4379 or 031 584 7194 or visit www.thelisteningroom.co.za
By Debbie Hathway, Private Edition, Issue 27
