Teutonic phono: Germany enjoys specialized machining expertise and HighEnd 2010 had plenty of evidence with domestic vinyl supporters, some established, some newer. Amongst the latter was three year-old Montegiro whose name and cosmetics suggest Italy. Producer Dattenberg GmbH is squarely German however and based out of Hattingen in the industrial Ruhrgebiet. Form factors admittedly owe nothing to Gelsenkirchen’s Baroque.


Montegiro premiered the Suono—alora, Italian for sound—a doube-plinth deck of black anodized aluminum with a 7kg stainless steel platter plus acrylic disc. The lower plinth contains the bearing, the upper holds the tone arm board. The plinths connect via height-adjustable spikes but, as Montegiro's Björn Merz pointed out, ceramic bearings insert decoupling to isolate platter spin and tonearm behavior. For further resonance control, either plinth is partially hollowed out, then filled with a mix of MDF, acrylic and custom glue. The glue never fully sets to add a certain level of compliant damping. The same compound can be found in the platter’s belly. The Klein Technik synchro motor stands separate, adopts flat belt drive and draws energy from an external two-phase sinus generator. Montegiro Suono pricing is €3.890 for the nude deck and €4.395 with a Feickert-modified 10.5" Jelco arm.

Far from a newcomer, Transrotor from Bergisch Gladbach is heavy metal analogue and proudly looks back on three decades of company history. As their Dark Star demonstrated, metal isn’t always the ticket and the POM material it introduced also shows up in the new Atlas. Though not loaded with the weight of the entire firmament as its mythic Greek namesake, the 20kg platter is far from lightweight. Herr Räke punned that they’d wanted to build something “kind of big and heavy". Kinda. Right. Demonstrating proper dumbbell fitness, Räke's design adds three motors to drive the Transrotor Magnet Drive TMD bearing. Such brute power translates not merely into drive but the triangulated motor placement equalizes belt pull and speed instability while remaining drive irregularities are statistically minimized. The Konstant M3 drive controller generates three control voltages.



TMD consists of two aluminum discs linked by ball bearings. The upper disc serves as sub platter, the lower one is motor driven and ‘pulls’ the sub platter via magnetic coupling to improve flutter performance. The Atlas is optimized for 12-inch arms though it does accommodate 10-inchers. The basic deck costs €7.600, an added 12-inch Jelco arm and Merlo MC pickup come to €8.800. The photo shows the SME 5012 option which clocks to shy of €10K. For lovers of the classic Transrotor look, Räke also had something new. His Rondino FMD runs an acrylic plinth and fat-boy aluminum platter for familiar thrills. The FMD acronym refers to Free Magnetic Drive, a more advanced implementation of the above magnet coupling which omits the intermediary ball bearing for greater decoupling. The Rondino arm board swivels freely to accommodate any length arm including 14-inch poseurs. Sans wand, this deck is €8.300, with 12" Jelco and Merlo cartridge €9.500.

The Acoustic Solid tribute to Micro Seiki named Solid Micro combines a 10kg aluminum platter driven from a round belt whose motor and controller sit on the plinth. That’s atypical for Wirth designs as the company’s Bruno Ferreni readily admits but a free-standing motor would have killed the Micro Seiki thematic - though there is rubber damping between motor and plinth. The bearing meanwhile is quintessential Acoustic Solid. i.e. a cast synthetic sleeving for the bearing. During manufacture a special compound is poured directly onto the bearing axle and after hardening, the desired slip film remains. This produces less bearing chatter, significantly reduced friction and stick/slip effects and also embeds some acoustic damping by preventing metal-on-metal contacts (the bearing itself is ceramic in a Teflon race). Fitted with the resident WBT 213 arm, the Solid Micro sells for €4.500, with the Jelco-derived WBT 211 for €3.900.

On the subject of arms, Helmut Brinkmann unveiled his Tonarm 9.6 whose nomenclature hints at length, making it the shortest in his portfolio of 10.5" and 12.1" arms. At €2.500, it is also the cheapest. It inherits the lift, head shell and basic assembly from its siblings but is no mere downsized model. The bearing was newly developed and differs from that of the longer arms with a double cardan joint. Principally the Tonarm 9.6 is a uni-pivot with a tiny ball bearing and steel point but vertical motion couples to one fixed yoke while the horizontal plane’s yoke contains deliberate play. Its function is to contain lateral deflections without disturbing the uni-pivot’s range of freedom. This supposedly marries the benefits of either suspension.



Also new and matching the 9.6 was the Tonabnehmer π pickup. Its micro-ridge needle profile claims long life expectancy and excellent HF resolution while the cross-leaved windings and iron core deliver relatively high output currents. Brinkmann recommends an approximate 600-ohm loading. €1.800 take home this MC cartridge. The photos shows the arm and pickup mounted to Brinkmann’s €5.000 Bardo, a direct-drive affair with 10kg platter suitable for arms from 9" – 10.5".