Rega Planar 10 Turntable Aims For Mass Destruction

Analog Corner

- Michael Fremer

Lately it seems that the more Rega charges for one of its turntables, the less you get—and from Rega’s performance perspective that’s a good thing. While some turntable designs pile on the mass, hoping to tame resonances and better isolate the record from the outside world, Rega has long advocated ultralow-mass designs. What’s up with that?

Rega defines a turntable as a “vibration measuring machine.” Therefore, they contend—and this is putting it as simply as possible—the lower the mass, the less energy the system can store, only to be later released to confuse and muddy up the sound. Overdamp a turntable and it can sound dull, dead, and lifeless. I’ve reviewed a few of those.

The only vibration Rega wants to measure is in real-time, at the stylus groove interface, after which it should quickly dissipate.

Only over the last decade or so, as new “space-age” materials have been developed, has Rega been able to truly test and fully implement its ideas—as in the now–near-legendary Rega Naiad, a ca-$45,000 ultracompact carbon fiber–based Rega that’s not practical to manufacture and so serves more as an auto show “concept car.” 1 Among the Naiad’s unusual features is a costly, difficult-to-manufacture, almost friction-free ceramic bearing.

Rega first put its Naiad research to practical use in the Planar 8, reviewed at analog planet. com. 2 Like the Planar 8, the new Planar 10 (or P10) uses for its minimalist plinth a superlight-weight Tancast 8 polyurethane foam core that Rega sandwiches (you could say squeezes) between a very thin, super-rigid, high-pressure laminate.