Project’s RPM 10.1 arrives in Wellington
New Reference Turntable in Store
With our constant growth in the turntable market, and vinyl Saturdays getting bigger and bigger, we decided we needed to upgrade what we had in Demo Lounge 2. Having sold the McIntosh MT5, we looked onto Project’s RPM 10.1.
Crighton must have known I’ve been lusting over this for a long time, and really just wants me to suffer. So when two large, heavy, ominous boxes arrived yesterday morning, I couldn’t help but be a bit excited…
The first box belongs to the Ground-It Deluxe 3. A massive base, filled with “granular damping”, weighing in at about 7.5KG, and featuring feet made from opposing magnets, making it effectively levitate.
This provides a good ‘grounding’ for the turntable, making it’s noise floor disappear!
The McIntosh MA8000 as a size reference. The Ground-It is half a metre wide!
Opening the second of the two boxes reveals, another box! Pro-Ject have double boxed this to help keep it safe during transit.
A heap of accessories, some spiked feet as well as belt, counterweights and measurement tools.
And there she is, the beautiful 10″ Evolution tone arm. Comprised out of a single piece of carbon fibre,
and the beefy, incredibly rigid mechanism.
The 3 spiked feet screw on to the base of the sub chassis giving it yet another element of isolation, from external vibrations as well as any possible motor noise.
The massive acrylic platter. Acrylic is used for it’s lack of resonance and the high mass means a consistent speed.
It also looks very, very cool.
The incredibly accurate motor. It features both 33.3 and 45rpm, and is situated on a very heavy steel base, meaning all the energy is focused into one thing. Making the platter turn!
The spacer to make sure the pulley system is the correct distance from the platter.
A provided spirit level makes sure both the Ground-It and platter are, well, on level.
I fitted our trusty Ortofon 2m Bronze, making sure the horizontal and vertical axis were appropriate, as well as the azimuth and overall fitting was correct.
Almost there! 18mN loading for the 2m Bronze.
I make the connection with Nordost’s Red Dawn interconnects to the McIntosh’s integrated phono preamplifier.
Physical Graffiti disc 2, one of my all time favourites.
Touch down!
And there we have it. Sonically phenomenal, functionally fantastic and what a work of art.
I’d go on about how it sounds, but it sounds much better than I do, so come in and have a listen.
William
