Electrocompaniet EMC II CD Player

That's an excellent suggestion and one I will look into. I don't mind doing a bit of Electrocompaniet's work for them if it will improve sonics. Now, if only the elusive Spider Clamp would emerge from its cacoon.

Interestingly I bought a beautiful, very lightweight aluminum crank pulley for Subaru engines recently. A gorgeous, single-billet, finely machined work of art that results in a much lower inertia at the crank, thus improving quick-starts. This pulley sells for a hefty (so I thought!) $90. I guess if it were marketed to us audiophools, relative to this skimpy CD clamp I suppose it should be priced over $1k. Maybe that California machine-shop that makes these pulleys can be convinced to knock out a 100-lot of the CD clamps for $50 each? Anybody have any leads to precision aluminum (or brass) machine-shops? Just a thought....

At times I start to think that the Spider Clamp's obscurity is a deliberate ploy to heighten interest in it. Wow, it's here! I won't notice it costs way too much! Here's my hard earned $$$$! Gimme, gimme, gimme!!!!
Really, just how difficult can this clamp be to manufacture afterall? Btw, I looked under the hood of the EMC-1 for the first time. You're right about the hook-up wire, doesn't look like much. Frankly, the whole thing doesn't look like much. After 4 years of gazing at a BAT VK-D5 and its glorious build quality, the EMC-1 seems rather cheesy inside. Sonically however, it's a great player. Not worth $5500 however based on the sum total of its parts IMO. The European and Asian price of $2500 is more like it.

Wish It were $2500 the european price, but the reality is $4100, at least in Spain.

The Spider is finally here in the States. I have one coming that's " in the mail ". I will post my reaction once I have it in place and have done some listening (probably within a week). You can get one now from Brian @ Artistic Audio (good guy). Check his ad on Audiogon.