Athena Turntable

Sharing many design features with our award-winning Arezzo, the Athena has recently been upgraded by fitting a completely new main bearing and sub-platter assembly. This has made a substantial improvement in all areas and we are totally confident in saying that the Athena will outperform any other turntable in its price range – and well above! Indeed, we are so confident in the sound quality of this deck that you can audition it for seven days and return it if, for any reason, you are not amazed by it. The Athena uses the same electrics, motor, pulley and belts as the Arezzo for low noise, rock solid timing and incredibly low wow and flutter - Hi-Fi News lab report measured it as 0.02% wow and 0.04% flutter! The Athena has had three superb press reviews: Hi-Fi News reviewed the Athena SE (identical performance but graphite grey and gold finish) in the October 2010 issue, The Greek magazine High Fidelity reviewed it in the February 2011 issue and Hi-Fi Choice have just given it a ‘5 star Recommended’ rating in the current (September) issue. Excerpts and conclusions of these reviews are reprinted below and we will happily supply you with copies on request. The Athena is visually striking as you can see by the pictures, however, clear acrylic is very hard to photograph and everyone remarks on how much better it looks in the flesh (so to speak) than the photographs. As with all our turntables, though, beauty is more than skin deep and absolute performance was our aim when we designed it. Without going into too much depth, the major design features are detailed below. · Resonance controlled two part clear acrylic plinth with high tensile fittings · Three point ‘Rigid + Compliant’ isolation system utilizing coned feet and sorbothane domes · High quality low voltage synchronous motor with SRM modifications · Separate power supply and motor control box · ‘Duo-Drive’ Twin belt drive system · Clear extruded acrylic platter with Arezzo platter mat · Newly designed high quality ‘zero play’ main bearing with special lubrication · Newly designed machined polymer sub-platter with platter isolating disc · Factory fitted EL-1 tonearm and Ortofon 2M red moving magnet cartridge