ELAC Miracord 90

Boy this looks yummy!

 

I'll be showing my age by saying this one has nothing on the classy looks of the original but the new one did get a nice write-up in the July issue of Hi-Fi News and Record Review.

 

The cartridge is MM sourced from Audio Technica- microline stylus.

 

Whistle and walk away
I like the look of that table and agree the silver is the better looking IMO.

 

$2500

 

Ridiculous.

 

Any thoughts on this one? It looks fabulous. Considering it as my next purchase.

 

I heard it at the Bristol show and was very, very impressed, especially when I discovered the price for the whole package, if you are looking to spend around £2,000 on a complete deck it has to be in the running and it also has the advantage of coming as a complete package.

 

Thanks. That's interesting. Visually it's stunning, glad to hear the sound matches up!

 

More so than the Shinola?

 

Hello,
Any idea about Elac miracord 90 against Rega P6/Ania ?
Elac is equiped with MM ( Audio technica ) and Rega with MC. Elac is more expensive.

 

I recently spent time with a Miracord 90 as a loaner. The Miracord 90 is uniquely designed and not at all bad, but for the price I would get a Rega P6. The ELAC has a nice platter, and the isolation system is clever, but there is no clamp and the felt mat that comes with it is unimpressive. The spindle is part of the platter and is short, so a clamp might not be possible. The tonearm assembly is nice but a bit dated—especially the anti-skating mechanism. I like the tonearm wand clamp, though.

Probably the most annoying thing about the Miracord 90 is the motor. It is clever how it starts up very slowly and then builds up speed (avoiding belt slippage and whatnot), but it is aggravatingly slow to get up to speed. If listening to several vinyl records, it is easier to leave it spinning. Once at speed, the motor/platter loses momentum surprisingly easily. Simply using a record brush can slow it down more than I would expect.

The ELAC/Audio Technica cartridge is nice, but that is all.

For $2500 there are many other turntables (with cartridges) that perform at least as well if not better.

 

Thanks donomar for these informations.

 

Just as I more or less suspected. The pricing in the US seems to be figured by the formula "imported = expensive", without much thought given to the rest. They forget to account for the fact that in this price category, there are plenty of worthier decks to consider. I'm no fan of VPI, but I'm sure the Prime can wipe the floor with this ELAC, and for $300 less. Or take another import - Rega Planar 6, of which again I'm not a huge fan, but for $2,200 you can have it with Ortofon 2M Black, and the combo should be able to slaughter the ELAC, wit its "nice" AT cart no-one has heard of. I guess these people figure the target customer for this deck is someone curious with idle money to burn.

 

I'd recommend that people listen to properly set up decks for themselves and make their own minds up, but from what I heard the Elac is better sounding than the Rega Planar 6, in the UK it's priced against the Rega Planar 8 which is more serious competition, but the Elac is definitely capable of holding it's own with decks around the £2,000 mark in the UK, personally if I was looking in that range I'd go for a Michell Gyro SE, but that doesn't mean that the Elac isn't a valid choice, or the Rega Planar 8 come to that especially as complete packages.

 

Fair point, but here in the US the local dealer is a dying breed. To listen - one would have to be interested enough in that particular table in the first place, have a dealer nearby (distances in the US are a slightly longer than in UK) who has it in stock and set up for audition, AND have that dealer be nice/cooperative enough to let you hear it, it and a few others, hopefully, to make your comparisons / judgments.

In NYC, from my personal experience, dealers are a snotty bunch. They want to sell you what they have, not to have what you want. And to get an audition of something that isn't priced as a car - good luck, they won't even reply to you. Realistically, to have the ability to audition multiple pieces of gear from various makes, and be able to do A/B/C/D comparisons - I'd have to travel to Illinois, to MusicDirect's warehouse, or to Michigan, to AudioAdvisor's. Or yet another far-away state, NeedleDoctor is in Nebraska, I think. And even then there's no guarantee they will want to devote all this time to you.

So, while you do make a fair point, you do not realize that most audio purchasing here has gone online, and is done on specs/reviews AND a liberal return policy - you can return something you don't like. If they didn't offer that - they'd be sitting in their huge warehouses waiting for people to drive up from other states - you can imagine how well that would go. Instead, they sell gear to people who have not heard it, ever, and do it in large enough volumes, every day. Some gear gets returned, but most is kept, as long as people are relatively satisfied with it.

In the case of this ELAC, it being a relatively obscure brand, as far as turntables go, at least, the price category they put it into has many competitors with proven track record, myriad of available reviews, upgrades, tweaks, etc. Someone would have to be REALLY curious to go with this relatively unknown table with an unknown "nice" cart to choose it over established competition. If you doubt it - you can probably get info on how low a number of ELAC tables has been sold so far.

Just to give you an example - the Bryston turntable, that was just introduced last year, or maybe the year before, is already being offered on special by AudioAdvisor as discontinued. Bryston is a fairly storied name, but not in turntables, and they decided to come out with their fist table, and they had to price it at over $3,000. Apparently - there weren't many takers. As of last year, MusicDirect was still selling the Avid brand tables - no more, guess there weren't too many takers, either. Mark Levinson's VPI-sourced turntable for over $10,000 will be discontinued soon enough, too, that's my prediction, and will enter, perhaps, a legendary "unicorn" status of something from the past that was great but didn't last.

Anyone who wants to break into the "new reality" US audio market with new unproven gear from obscure brands must be prepared to price their wares aggressively for a while, to be able to establish a reputation, for they're going against established competition. They cannot realistically expect people to all of a sudden develop this huge interest in their table to go and listen to it, or buy it on trust/specs for this price. If you think that I will go even from Brooklyn to Manhattan, not far, to listen to this deck - the answer is NO. But I will buy a new Technics 1200 online, on blind trust/reputation, without ever hearing it first, and I am far from alone.

My twenty-two cents...

 

*Needle Doctor - Twin Cities (Gophers, not Huskers)

 

Sorry, I did remember it was some place cold, just wasn't sure which one...

 

Sorry, what’s the price of the Vpi prime ( in Europe, about 5000€).

 

ELAC's made turntables longer than Rega, ClearAudio and others. Remember ELAC/Miracord and ELAC/Miraphon. I am listening to a 1968 ELAC/Miracord 50H classic, Papst Hysteresis motor and all. This new one is around 40 something moving parts short of it's heritage.

 

ELAC probably makes more sense than VPI in Eureope then.

 

I'm aware of that, but I've had to research it. People who know it offhand are largely those who simply remember it from way back when, not too many of those. They've taken a looooong break from making turntables, is my understanding, and now are trying to get back into it, which is nearly equivalent to starting from scratch. Imagine someone in the US buying the brand of Marmon, or Cord, or Pierce Arrow, and trying to build cars with the name, and then trying to sell those cars here AND in Europe for prices commensurate with established luxury brands. How many do you think they would manage to sell?

 

So I decided it will be Rega.
I received the P6/Ania, plugged it, and play it through a Lehmann statement. It sounds very good and I am happy with it. But I couldn’t compare with Elac.
The rest of my system is Naim audio (282+250.2) and Triangle signature Alpha speakers with QED cables.