TURNTABLES
These decks will do your vinyl justice, whether you’re buying new or digging out your old records
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This ‘Rega Special’ package refines an already great turntable
◼Rega Planar 3 RS Edition
£999
Iconic by name and reputation, Rega’s Planar 3 has been the recipient of more What Hi-Fi? Award wins than we can count over the decades . This RS Edition is an elevated Planar 3, further refining an already excellent build and performance to deliver even more from your vinyl records and bring you closer to the music.
There are ways to upgrade the Planar 3’s performance – add an outboard power supply, upgrade to a step-up cartridge – but this package also features an upgraded plinth that elevates the performance of the Planar 3 while keeping the overall price competitive.
Rega’s turntable design principles can be summed up in four words: low mass, high rigidity. The brand believes that adding mass to the structure of a turntable absorbs energy from the music and increases the transmission of unwanted resonances to distort the sound, so the aim is to avoid adding on structural mass wherever possible. The materials used and design choices throughout its turntable range reflect this principle, and we encounter more sophisticated materials, clever engineering and improved sound quality as you go higher up the range. The RS Edition comes with the excellent RB330 tonearm and the Nd5 cartridge fitted as standard. The Nd5 uses a “perfect elliptical nude diamond” as the stylus, to deliver greater tracking-accuracy and detail retrieval. The Neo PSU Mk2 outboard power supply is included in the package price. This is custom matched to the RS package and designed to deliver a cleaner power-supply feed to the deck’s motor. The other advantage it brings is electronic speed switching.
That same familial Rega sound is instantly identifiable – snappy, agile rhythm and dynamically exciting, and a fluid, natural way with melody that is simply fun to listen to. It sounds terrifically stable and solid, with Kurt Cobain’s intimate, raw singing on Plateau from Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged coming through with greater depth, power and weight to each note. The guitar strums and resonances around the strings are more textured and tactile, and have more grit and muscle to them than when playing the same record on the standard Planar 3.