Timestep Evo Turntable

For a long time we have been building special turntables for our customers.  Most of them are nearly identical and based on the one we use for our demonstrations.  A lot of people have asked for the price of what they hear, and now as a single package you can purchase our best value turntable.

It has evolved over the years as our depth of knowledge has increased and as our understanding of the subtleties of Technics direct drive architecture became more apparent.  It is with that in mind that we have christened this model the Evo.

The advantage of a proper phase locked, crystal controlled, direct drive motor is the absolute pitch stability, so important on piano and also on electronic music.  There is no belt to compress and expand, and no matter how much energy the cartridge is taking out of the record, there is no pitch error.  In fact there is never ever any short or long term frequency error, the PLL of the Technics maintains absolute phase stability and even if you slow the turntable down with your finger, the pitch will not change, only the phase, but remarkably when the finger is removed, the phase goes back to where it was.  This is the absolute ultimate in pitch stability.  But all direct drive turntables are not created equal, many do not in fact have good pitch stability, and some none at all!  Also some aftermarket modifications reduce the stability in an effort to make them more musical and more like an LP12.  Timestep, led by Dave Cawley, know exactly what they are doing and measure, audition and document every single modification.

Timestep go even further and very subtly adjust the PLL motor dynamics to be optimum for the Oyaide platter/mat.  This absolute fanatical attention to detail produces one of the best sounds you will ever hear from a turntable.  We also adjust the speed to be 10 times better than turntables costing over £10K.  Pitch stability is very important but absolute pitch is equally important.

The bearing is crucial and we use a specially manufactured unit to our own design with twice the surface area of the existing unit and over twice the diameter.  This runs on a silicon nitride ball on a replaceable PTFE thrust pad.  We even auditioned and measured over a dozen or so different types of oil.

The platter was a complete surprise to us!  At the 2010 Whittlebury Hi Fi Show a Japanese engineering company came up to our stand with a platter that looked like a cross between a Ducati racing motorcycle disc brake and a flying saucer, and in fact machined to the same ultimately high precision.  We should have known from their passion that this was the platter/mat for keeps, but we took it home, tested it, measured it, listened to it and came to the conclusion it was in fact the ultimate.  Unlike other very heavy platters there was no problem with phase or pitch stability/wandering.

The tonearm caused some head scratching, as so many people loved the SME 309, and after some time we concluded that if we specially ordered it and paired it with the Oyaide interconnect cable we had a winner.  There is absolutely no hum at all, none.  The 309 renders the music just like it is, no extra embellishment, no drama, just the truth.  The Oyaide cable adding that little bit extra and eliminating a potential hum issue at the same time.

The cartridge is a matter of choice.  The AT33EV (Evolution) adds  just a bit of the Koetsu Rosewood signature  and gives a slightly more grown up sound.  The AT33EV is a superb match to the SME 309, so for us it's a no-brainer, but the customer can have any cartridge he desires, fitted by us.

We believe this turntable will become a classic in the same way as the SP-10 and L07D but without the maintenance problems and with a thoroughly modern cartridge and arm combination.

HiFi World chose the Timestep Evo to use as their reference turntable.

Read the EVO  review in Hi Fi World click here
 

Sound Hi Fi

PO Box 2001  Dartmouth Devon  TQ6 9QN  Great Britain

Telephone 01803 833366  Fax 01803 839498  e-mail sales@SoundHiFi.com