Brinkmann Bardo vs Transrotor Fat Bob Reference

Thanks for your comments Audioquest, yes I must admit I was surprised by the vividness and obvious lack of compression from vinyl when I first heard the Fat Bob Plus. The 'Plus' gives little away to the Reference, and i'm using the same tonearm & ps as the Reference, and the Shilabe is an outstanding cartridge. I think if I upgrade any part of my rig in the future, it is more likely to be the phono stage. My existing stage (Bladelius Heimdal) is a fine phono stage for now. I may also be tempted to upgrade to a reference arm like an SME-V or Triplanar one rainy day, but really we're talking about upgrading from Mercedes to Bentley. I'm perfectly happy where I am.

Dear Mel, Now that you made your choice, there is little point in this, but in the case of the Bardo, you would never want to or have to purchase an optional outboard PS. The Bardo, like all direct-drive turntables, must include its own outboard power supply which needs to be linked to the motor speed via a servo, in order to stablize the drive. In this case, additional AC treatments preceding the motor supply module are unnecessary if not even a bad thing. So the difference in cost between the two still equals the cost of a tonearm, which is not inconsiderable.

Hi Lewm, that's intersting! From your comments, the Bardo is obviously an excellent table straight out of the box, however fate obviously played a part in my decision to go for the TR. Still I will keep an eye on this thread, it would interesting to read any comments from members who have directly compared both the TR Ref and Bardo..both outstanding bits of kit!

I have the Bardo and an Technics Sp10. Both were improved by connecting to a Purepower conditioner. Both were further improved by running the power conditioner on battery pack without connecting to the wall. I checked the speed with a strobe and the same speed is maintained. The sound is more focused with better high frequency detail. It is also smoother with lower noise floor.

My belt drive table seems less sensitive to the power conditioner.

Hi Glai, that's interesting and implies the Brinkmann is more sensitive to line noise. Picking up on earlier discussion about the differences in the belt drive vs direct drive approach, I received this reply directly from Transrotor in response to a question asking why why they decided on the belt, as opposed to direct drive approach -

we chose the belt drive because we think it is the best way not to bring resonances from the motor to the platter. The negative aspect of the belt drive (the belt slip) is compensated by the magnetic drive, the TMD