I dare say they are looking Far East for most of their sales.
I bet they'll sell as many as they can make!
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I dare say they are looking Far East for most of their sales.
I bet they'll sell as many as they can make!
Astonishing Adam. I wonder if they'll actually sell any?
I went on Sunday and thought it was fantastic.
The venue is superb as were the staff and because the rooms were spread out there was plenty of room.
I thought the sound in the rooms was much better than other shows I have visited and the exhibitors I found very friendly.
Some have commented that it looked empty but the stand is quarter of a mile long and on 6 levels. Ascot has a capacity of 70,000 so no wonder it looked quiet.
Stand outs for me were KEF room, Gato, Monitor Audio, Henley with Klipsch speakers and the Chord Co speaker cable presentation. I enjoyed the new Cambridge Audio high end kit and Elite showing Manley amps.
The vintage gear was good but a bit tucked away and Absolute Sounds was high class porn.
I saw a bit of Fremer but it was easy to lose some sections. They may improve on signposting and central locations next year. I would also have liked a few show specials on kit as buying stuff at a show is always tempting.
So they are just 'tarting up'/refurbishing existing Garrard 301s? What will they do when the supply of used 301s is exhausted - make new ones: and at what price?
There is a well known refurbisher of 301s, who advertises here but auctions his work on eBay. I doubt if any of them sell for anything like a fraction of the asking price of the SME effort.
Having said that it's probably a better effort than Thorens's reborn TD124 - I snapped this at Munich, though nothing's been heard of it since.
Essentially they have taken the design of the TD124 and built a relatively lightweight direct drive deck (my guess would be using their new 799 Euro direct drive TT announced earlier this year - their first DD for decades) around the shape. It has nothing in common with the original at all apart from the shape. Even the material is plastic rather than metal - only the two speeds (33 and 45), the on-off is a lightweight switch (not satisfying clunk), I didn't get to hear it but from brief encounter, disappointing. Though I doubt it'll be £18k!
https://i.imgur.com/kljcseP.jpg
EDIT a bit more research and found this, it's 12,000 Swiss Francs - about £9.5k. https://nzzas.nzz.ch/wissen/thorens-...7?reduced=true
Blimey !!
It seems they all want to cash in on the history of these great old girls.
Shame.
Btw something strange happening on the Image I posted of the SME Garrard 301 ...
it’s Basically been deleted (not by me !) from Imgur ! Wtf!?
Did someone’s cage get rattled!
Strange! There is a video of it on youtube from Munich
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aszFbOaIkCg