Turntable in 20 K$ price range - Design & Music

Just one word of caution regarding the Grand Prix Monaco.

Be aware that one has to accept that there are only a limited choice of tone arms that can be used.

I was very surprised to learn during my conversation (April 2009) with owner/designer Alvin Lloyd that arm boards are "only" available for tone arms he accepts on his TT : Tri-planar, Graham and Morch.

The pupose of my call was to see if my Da Vinci Grandezza could be fitted, we never got to talk about other arms I own because Alvin Lloyd will not consider making for any other arms outside the above listed ones until he "considers" that the combo will work to his standards.

So if you have your Ikeda, FR-66s, Schroder, Kuzma...linear tracking..then your going to have to reconsider if you were temped to try them on the GPM.

One could make an "adaptor" but very frankly that seems wrong in some way for a 20k$ TT!

I was contemplating a listening session of the GPM but given the above restriction will seek an alternative way.

Tim

Downunder,

Yes indeed, so I guess that Alvin Lloyd forgot that one, thanks for pointing out.

If any other have experiences with other arms that ones quoted it would be instructive.

Tim

Johnnyb53,
I did not read the whitepaper, seems instructive.

And they have changed approach from:

"We can design and produce arm boards for other tone arms as required by our clients"

Since :

"What we learned was that the Monaco Turntable is fundamentally free of coloration and has proved to be an ideal platform for comparing and evaluating tone arms"

That is what I was expecting, like any high end TT, and different arms have different merits, just enjoying the arm/cartridge combo on the TT is important for many.

Tim