One of my friend in San Jose is hosting a listening party this Sunday at his place. One of the developer of Teres TT now owns a company called Redpoint or something like that. Anyways, the guy is brining two Teres TT over this Sunday to my friends place. We are having a listening party to listen to the Teres TT and how it compares to my friend's Michell Gyro on an SET system! FrankC |
I was there. San Jose with the Redpoint. Sounded okay but I was a bit unfamiliar with the DIY Bottlehead system. In fact, I think most of the positive elements I heard were more a result of the 2A3 tubes than the Redpoint turntable. It would have been nice to listen the the Gyro vs. the Redpoint. The Redpoint had what seemed to be an an old SME arm and an Ortofon cartridge (which was a cartridge and head shell in one). A fat ugly thing. Honestly.. I cannot say why those components (arm/cart) were selected to showcase the Redpoint product. One thing I did notice with the Redpoint (and others commented too) was the sheer lack of surface noise. During the hour or so I was there, I heard three ticks during a quiet passage on one of the classical LPs. I wonder if that was a result of the arm and cartridge? The Redpoint auditioned was a new design ($8K). Instead of a round platter, this one must have had 20 sides...Uh.. a twentygon? I didn't count the number of sides but it was a lot, okay? :) The platter was driven with Magnetic VCR film which seems odd given that film seems to be full of static electricity - and Peter from Redpoint claims you can see electricity arc from the film to the platter on occasion. Guess that's why they have a "special" nut on the bearing which allows the unit to be grounded (most tables have this). The thing I can't figure out is why using something which is so prone to static charge, as a belt, is a good thing. The Redpoint site http://www.redpoint-audio-design.com says a great deal to discount the designs (materials used) of Teres. Not nice! First impressions count. Unfortunately, the audition left me more confused than I was -- before the audition. |
I guess that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I recently purchased a Redpoint Testa Rosa and very much like its industrial look. The parts are shined to a high gloss and are very user friendly. I am using a Kuzma Stogi Reference arm and a Shelter 901 (still breaking in). I agree with the above comment regarding the background silence as I really didn't think that a TT could have this low of a noise floor. I am sure that it is hard to fairly judge a TT when you are listening to other peoples systems with unfamiliar components. When I plugged this into my system (Hovland preamp, SF power 3se mono's, and Vienna Acoustic Mahlers) the improvements over my previous VPI setup was significant. |
Dmailer - I agree. It is difficult to accurately assess a source component in the context of an unfamiliar system. Perhaps that is the reason why I am still so confused about the the Redpoint/Teres tables. Having read so much positive feedback on these tables, I expected to be floored by the Redpoint regardless of system context, arm or cartridge. However, the low surface noise was amazing to me... but the owner of the house / Gyro / system, didn't seem all that amazed by it. I asked him if there was less surface noise than his Gyro and he said, "hmmmm.. maybe a little bit, I don't know." |
