The design isn't bad in my book. Its just their choice of material to bring down overall weight. To my knowledge p8 use same foam material, just skeleton stripped.
AFAIK, testing using accelerated aging should be a quite reliable way of testing when correctly performed. No need to extend the development time of a product with 2 years (in many cases it’s not even viable). Accelerated aging - Wikipedia
I’d go with a Gem Dandy Polytable over the Concept tables in this price range. George can pre-mount a cartridge for you. If you like the idea of a Rega arm, George can make that happen too. The concept MM is a decent cartridge but not in the league of the 2M Bronze or Sumiko Amethyst (yes, I’ve actually owned the Concept MM, even modified it with a shibata stylus). My local dealer feels the Concept MC is a very good cartridge, however (here comes the “conjecture” part), it’s my opinion that its performance would largely be compromised by the Concept’s magnetic tonearm bearing. While I haven’t heard this cartridge with the Concept arm, I have had my hands on this arm and am puzzled by the design choice. Getting them setup and sounding good is quite a challenge according to my dealer, because of the tonearm’s sensitivity to external forces. Now the following is only conjecture on my part (albeit educated conjecture), but I suspect Clearaudio found the magnetic bearing was an inexpensive means of producing a low-friction arm with very consistent results. However, as with everything in engineering, there are tradeoffs. In this case, it was mechanical tolerance around the bearing axis and sensitivity to external vibration. I also suspect this is why the next arm in the Clearaudio range has conventional bearings. Aside from its standard arm, I think the Concept is a quality machine. If that’s the direction you’re leaning, I would buy the table with the Satisfy arm, and ask the dealer if they’d remove the MM cart and give you a deal on an alternative, maybe the 2M Bronze or a Hana EL. Or consider the Marantz TT-15S1, which comes with the Satisfy arm and a better cartridge for a lower price.
Thanks! I was looking at the Marantz TT-15S1, but the manual turned me off. I don’t want to put so much of the turntable together myself. I’m sure I’d botch something.
Perhaps you should talk with any of thousands of owners who don't have any "issues" with their Planar 6 plinths and appreciate what the material and design bring to the sound. -Bill
I hear you. The Planar 6 was my first choice. But the sagging plinth seems like a pretty messed up flaw to happen in multiple units.
You may want to send an e-mail to Rega and ask what they have done to address the issue. Their answer would affect my buying decision. A local walk in dealer would also help alleviate the inconvenience if it starts to sag.
Good point but I bet there could be some people out there that don't realize their plinth is sagging. And, not everyone has the same 'eye' for straight lines, etc. Mine is only obvious from a certain angle at a certain distance and I just happened to notice it two nights ago as I can't really see the table from my listening chair. And, I subscribed to this thread about two years ago.
I'm not doubting. I've seen a shoe company do it years ago. The problem is Rega didn't do it here obviously, or if they did, the test procedure wasn't good enough. Odds are they don't have the ability to do it at their facility and would need to send the item out to a third party. Reading about this issue with the Rega P6, I wonder how common general adhesive failures are with commercial products. Back in 2011 or 2012 I bought a new car, and maybe a year after owning it there was a recall for adhesive failure on the interior headline fabric. Mine was fine but I took it in to have a new headliner installed anyway, since the manufacturer was paying for it. Surely a massive car company has the resources to test such things but there was a failure there too.
Yes, in the end, nothing is 100% failproof. Makes you wonder why certain governments are starting up nuclear test programs again
Was that GM? Add to the list of woes peeling paint and sticking gas gauges. But these are shortcuts intended to reduce costs...cheaper brand of paint or a new supplier of gauges....or a new collective agreement favourable to the corporation resulting in worker sabotage. This kind of stuff happens all the time in large scale manufacturing. The problem with the P6 is simply a poor choice of materials: Take a heat sensitive material, suspend it at the corners then drop a weight in the middle of it. Now place it atop a rack of warm electronic components. Sag is inevitable, it should've been foreseen and possibly was, hence the cutaway plinth in the higher models.
yes they should. companies with quality engineering practices will assign a "novelty rating" to new parts or systems during the release of new products. basically the higher the novelty rating the more testing is required for validation. a foam filled muliti material shell turntable plinth would receive a very high novelty rating since they did not have such parts in production and little to no experience or history.
It was not GM. The car ended up having other long-term issues as well and I ended up selling it before I put a lot of miles on it. I still get letters about recalls and lawsuits even though I got rid of the car a few years ago. Kinda funny. I always thought the design of the P6 plinth was a little weird. That makes sense that they would cut holes in the P8 and such. Honestly I don't like the idea of foam as a plinth material in general. If I got stuck with a sagging foam plinth Rega I'd probably just transfer everything to a plinth of more stable material. Lots of aftermarket Rega plinths available.
Ands that's the issue with any problem in a consumer product. Depending on the way it is being used and the individual user, many people may never notice the problem, or simply not care.
Faiure escape possibilites (prolly missing some) 1. Accelerated testing not conducted 2. Accelerated testing plan failed to capture the sag failure potential in its test plan. 3. Known change in material or process after initial testing which wasn't validated properly. 4. Unplanned change in material or procees undetected or detected without quarantine. Definitely a material failure, root cause unknown to us. Prolly a number of them undetected in the field, and likely only seen and not heard.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the supplier of the glue had accidentally produced a bad batch or changed the composition of the glue mixture without notice. In that case, prototype testing can’t prevent it.
I have not personally seen any of these tables plinths with any deformation. There have been many sold, thousands actually, and I have only seen two or three times where someone has complained about one sagging, so only remote evidence with no study of cause. So it must be rather isolated and could be from storage / transit in hot conditions or some other outside of normal use scenario. Of course you are correct in that the foam material manufacturing could also be a source of variance from sample to sample. In any case, the tables are warrantied for three years and if there is a significant problem related to mfg, then it would be covered. Storage and transport, well I'm not going to guess what might become of that, but I do know that they don't want to distribute products with defects, known or unknown. Rather than suggest that foam manufacturing formula has changed, as that would not be good practice for the supplier, it is possible that it is a difficult product to make in consistent batches. Perhaps variances in heat or curing times can cause structural property variances using the same formula. So in that case, it would be a process problem rather than a formulation problem. The foam is available in different densities from the maker and I am not sure which was chosen for making the P 6 plinths. Perhaps the lightest as that would be a design goal, and the application is far from rigorous. I mean the whole table weighs only about 11 lbs. If they went to the next level of density foam up, it might help structural load bearing and not really effect the weight much. Clearly the want the lightest material that they can use. The real work is being done by the brace / beam system which the main bearing and tonearm are mounted to. The plinth serves only to allow support for the dustcover, motor, and feet. Of those, it has to have feet, so some type of base is needed, but as seen in the Planar 8 and Planar 10, it doesn't have to be a rectangular sheet. -Bill
There are more reports if you search on Google for Rega Planar 6 and sagging. Definitely no way to quantify, and it doesn’t pick up people who DON’T have this problem. But there seem to be enough reports that it’s clearly not isolated to just one or two tables. A three-year warranty is nice. It I don’t want to spend $2,000 on a product that might crap out in a strange way in just a few years.
No one is reporting any that "crap out". Hell, even complex DD units don't usually get globally accused of that when drive components drift in value or fail. I think there is a bit of overreaction here. For one thing, there does seem to be just a few units that are being described as having any such sag. That's out of thousands in use, so let's get that into perspective. Then, if a deck did have a slight sag in the plinth, it is very unlikely to effect the operation of the table. These have the main bearing and tonearm mounted on braces which should keep the geometry correct and what you see is just the front edge being slightly bowed. In such a case, even if one didn't opt to have it remedied, the decks should play fine and might need to be leveled with something under a foot or two. But I get it, there is some concern from those that can't make a decision after reading about it. I haven't seen any such thing in person and have only read (and I did search for it) a few reports. I recall people wigging out about warped platters on Technics decks not long ago, and I don't think that justifies warning people to avoid purchase of those for that reason. Such stuff is pretty rare and should be viewed in that perspective. -Bill
but it will be heard. the sagging plinth affects the plane of the base of the tonearm and the tonearm will be slightly skewed relative to the platter.
Not likely with the design of these decks. They don't mount directly to the plinth, but to braces, which are then mounted to the plinth. I don't think the braces will change shape. That's really why they are there. The top 2 designs essentially do away with a plinth entirely. The 6 uses a plinth as a base for the dustcover and feet. I think it's just cosmetic, but I will stand corrected if any are ever shown to change that geometry. -Bill
Agreed. You would think a manufacturer with global distribution would have a QA/QC process in place-ISO 9000 or similar.
