Well then, look what my long suffering DPD courier dropped off yesterday;
It's a Studiodeck and it's mainly here to be tested as part of a system but it's getting a solo look for AVForums first. It's an interesting bit of kit.
I'll start with the bits I like;
This is an impressive bit of hardware at the asking price. It's nice to see something that can take a wide spread of cartridges without any struggle. It's all easy to setup and use too.
At the moment, Pro-Ject is the king of affordable turntable feet... but these aren't bad at all. The simple expedient of there being four feet does point to a certain confidence that everything is twist free.
It's well made, went together well and it is satisfactorily pitch stable too.
There are some not so good bits too;
This is strobing faintly. This test sample is far from new but it does suggest that the LED inside is unwell.
This... isn't very good. At all. This is the second of Mo-Fi's carts to pass through. I had wondered if they benefit from a home advantage. They don't.
This has rather improved matters and is far from unreasonably priced in the context of the deck.
Presentation wise, I'm dialling into what it does. It's possibly a little relaxed for me and my flat earth (this is an
audio rather than conspiracy theory position) tendencies but I can see what it does being rather appealing depending on how you partner it up. It's a big, good looking, well made and quite characterful bit of kit. In the UK, it's £150 more than a Rega Planar 6 (also less cart) and, for my tastes, I'd go with that (unless I was looking to mount a truly oddball cart where I suspect this would work better) but I can imagine with US pricing (ie home pricing advantage to the Studiodeck) would probably have me re-evaluating that.