Finally, Systemdek will supply a free-standing cover for those who need one. They are (sensibly) reluctant to attach a dust cover to the turntable’s plinth: they never, ever improve the sound! As someone who has suffered several cases of stylus feline interruptus, I can appreciate the provision.
All told, that’s a lot of thoughtful and beautifully executed engineering, which makes the price of the Systemdek Revolution all the more surprising. The deck itself will cost you £6,250 GBP, the optional external power supply another £2,500 GBP – with both figures including 20% sales tax! Any way you look at it, this is a whole lot of turntable for your money – a turntable that combined with a carefully chosen but affordable arm can be built into an astonishingly accomplished record player.
Set-up – simple is as simple does…
Setting up three-point suspended decks and maintaining and their state-of tune has possibly caused more audio angst than any other single issue – at least in the UK. At one time, the who, what, where and when of your turntable’s set-up defined not only how serious you were but your whole audio status. Even today, it’s possible for UK-based practitioners to make a healthy living from solely setting-up LP12s. Leaving aside the whole issue of whether any properly engineered product should be that difficult to optomise and unstable in operation, it has cast a long shadow of suspicion over suspended decks as a whole. Well, as befits its name, the Systemdek Revolution is no respecter of history or accepted wisdom. In fact, suspended or not, this is one of the easiest decks I’ve ever set-up – just so long as you start in the right place and complete all the steps…
For many readers, the three-point suspended turntable is a thing of legend, wrapped in the dark arts. I’ll readily admit to needing a mental refresher course before nailing the Revolution’s set-up. So here’s a step by step primer for those in need.
First order of business is mounting the tonearm. With removable, pre-cut armboards, this is simplicity itself. Just make sure that you get the armboard the right way round (it’s symmetrical so a mistake isn’t that hard to make) or the P2S dimension will be wrong and you won’t be able to align the cartridge properly. I’d like to see Systemdek mark the orientation of the armboards, maybe with a small dimple in the surface of the end that sits closest to the platter. The Richlite material resists compression nicely, which means that mounting bolts can be secured tightly and won’t loosen over time, the way they do with MDF or wooden ‘boards. I received armboards cut for 9” Linn geometry and Rega single-hole mounts, allowing me to install the Alphason Xenon/HR-200S and Origin Live Zephyr tonearms. The Kuzma 4Point would fit in dimensional terms, but needs a larger diameter central hole than the Linn standard – and it’s probably too heavy to be an ideal partner anyway, although the 4Point9 might be an interesting match.
