STRATOSPHERE
Precision Turntable

WHERE DID IT ALL START?

Fifty years ago and some, vinyl records were pretty well the only medium to play music in the home.

There were also cassette tapes and reel to reel recorders, the former developing through the 80s to a very acceptable standard albeit vinyl in those days held the top position.   There were one or two names synonymous with top vinyl playback, many of them still with us today.  Linn, SME, Michell to name just a few, all worthy of very special merit.  However, being an enthusiast and always searching for the very best or indeed any improvements possible, I had some ideas from my engineering background that there may just be a different way and maybe even a better way of retrieving whatever is in vinyl record grooves.  Solidity has always been something I have been interested in concerning many commodity products and that is how the Stratosphere has emerged, from looking at the solution from a slightly different angle.  Many turntables of the day used a fairly lightweight philosophy to achieve the results desired, perfect timing with minimal wow and flutter, quietness of bearing and motor, low rumble and most of all, serious dynamics.

ENTER THE STRATOSPHERE, A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE.

The Stratosphere was firstly conceived nearly 40 years ago and the philosophy I used then was down the solidity road.  My theory was, as it is now, solidity has less chance of adding any unwanted problems or frequencies or what is know in the Hi-Fi world as ‘colouration’.  In other words, deviation from the original program material.  The world is full of vibrations.  Even the ground we stand on can deliver measurable vibrations that can in the world of vinyl reproduction be detected albeit in very small quantities through the record grooves up to the stylus that retrieves the music from the grooves and then further up the chain, to the pickarm, cables and just about anything that may interfere with a true and accurate musical signal.  My theory was if you start with solidity, there will be less corruption and less additives to the sound, the true music on the record being delivered in full.

That was the start of the Stratosphere some time ago.  There are many users of the first MK 1 and MK2 versions which have been running successfully for many years and still are to this day.  The Stratosphere is built to last.  Although I believed at the time that the original Stratosphere was pretty good for it’s day, I have over the last few years realised that it needed updating and over the last 18 months I have been working on every aspect of the turntables performance raising it to Stratospheric levels (sorry) and I am now confident that it stands superior to many of today’s reference products where vinyl production is the most important part of an enthusiast’s life.  The Stratosphere is a life product and hopefully the MK3 will be so for another 40 years.

ENTER THE STRATOSPHERE MK 3

So, how have these latest improvements materialised?  Basically solidity of materials is the key plus the use of the quietest inert materials currently available.  The Stratosphere has always been substantially solid but some of these latest improvements have taken solidity coupled with technical refinement to another level.