New Rega Deck

[i_should_coco]

http://audiofi.net/2013/06/rega-naiad-sneak-peek-at-the-30000-turntable/

Not exactly a budget item.

 

[Guest]

Very silly.

 

[i_should_coco]

Why?

 

[Guest]

I can't afford it, therefore I shall be derogatory about it:^

 

[i_should_coco]

:^

 

[It Cost How Much!?!]

So for £30K, you get a Rega arm and probably the standard shitty cabling and a TT clearly based on a Pink Triangle Tarentella / Funk Firm concept, but in carbon / metal. If I was spending £30K on a TT, I would want some sort of suspension system and/or stand with it. It does seem a bit strange, being as Rega is basically a budget deck manufacturer and this has always been the excuse for the lack of isolation.

I can see some HEAVY discounts at the dealers for this.

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I wonder if it has the terrible wow & flutter that the other Rega decks have?

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I can't afford it, therefore I shall be derogatory about it:^

Neither can I, unless I take out a mortgage.

 

[AmDismal]

It's quite hard to see where the money has gone, isn't it? Carbon fibre isn't that expensive now, and the combination of elegant curves and industrial spikes is kinda odd. For £30k I'd want a clearer design theme, and something drop-dead amazing like counter-rotating platters. And suspension and a lid.

 

[RSand]

It's quite hard to see where the money has gone, isn't it? Carbon fibre isn't that expensive now, and the combination of elegant curves and industrial spikes is kinda odd. For £30k I'd want a clearer design theme, and something drop-dead amazing like counter-rotating platters. And suspension and a lid.

The zirconian bearing won't be cheap, sure its super hard but why bother when there are other materials available at a fraction the cost that will sound just as good? If I had £30k spare kicking around this wouldn't be on my shopping list. Expecting a que for the signed copies is a touch optimistic? They'll be sub £15k on the wam in six months

 

[Guest]

I'll be waiting for the ken ishiwata signature version covered in copper plating with a few choice caps in the power supply, that's where the smart money is, oh it'll be worth more to with Kens sig on it!

 

[dudywoxer]

Sorry Roy, but I don't want you signature on my deck thanks.

£30k, and it looks like its sat on 6" nails as spikes. It looks more like the test bed for the new range of Rega decks (Think PP8, P9 under the plinth skin) than a statement product, and I would need a huge stack of spare cash to even bother listening to it, never mind buy it. The fact that is not suspended is probably a benefit rather than a drawback.

If they are available on the used market at £15k in a few months, they will, along with every other ''superdeck'' still be overpriced.

 

[meninblack]

For £30k I'd want Unicorn-horn spikes.

 

[peterbj]

Not great looking for the price £3,000 seems more like it !

 

[SMEagol]

I'll stick with my Oxford Crystal, and leave my laughingly hypothetical £30k in the bank.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Read that the first 40 units get unique serial numbers and will be personally signed by Roy Gandy. Do they really think they'll sell that many?

Doesn't look like a £10k deck to me, letalone £30k.

 

[khfm865]

Agree with all comments - just can't possibly see where your money goes with this. Ridiculous IMO.

 

[The Strat]

Urm - change of thinking at Rega. In a way I can't blame them - a prominent TT manufacturer told me a little while ago that there is real market for uber priced decks.

 

[Muddy Funster]

I think you are all getting this massively arse about face. This isn't Rega turning its hand to making limousines or Formula One cars; I can't write this without it reading like complete pretentious cobblers, but it's like buying the Platonic Form of Rega. It's not meant to be the last word in bling or massive overengineering, it's the Mitochondrial Eve of Rega turntables... all current Rega turntables derive from the Naiad. Truth is, even up until about May this year, Rega was still unsure whether this product was a product, for the same reasons you have intimated. It was a breadboard design for the RP-series developments. However, Roy had been repeatedly asked to bring the test-bed into production - "whatever the cost" - by distributors and guests who visited the factory, and by absolutely anyone who heard it at Roy's listening room.

Having been one of the lucky few who has heard it (and perhaps the only person here who's actually got some listening time on the turntable, allowing me to pass comment with something even remotely connected to an informed opinion, even though the room and the rest of the system was new to me), there is a lot of potential in the Naiad. But even up to a few weeks ago, Roy remained 'troubled' by the costs involved in making the turntable, and the fact that it is such a low-numbers device (due to the practically one-off nature of some of those parts) it will necessarily cost far more than any other Rega thing, ever. But, IIRC about 25 of those first 40 decks were a shoe-in due to pre-orders on the deck, if it ever came to fruition.

As of about March this year, it was going to be a limited run of turntables to distributors alone, but someone pointed out to Roy that all it would do is massively piss off those full-time Rega supporters who would happily chew off their arm to own anything Rega... and they do exist. So, it became the Naiad and was started to be considered to be a product that could go into strictly limited production. As to the signed editions and the first 40 serial numbers being in sequence from 1973-2013... that was my idea I'm afraid, when we visited Rega recently.

Given the market for top-end turntables, I anticipate a market of about 80-100 units all up, even at £30,000, and I think that Rega will probably sell most of those in the first 12-18 months, and then spend the next three and a half years selling the last few, because that is how high-end rolls. Yes, if it had been built like an obsidian and acrylic obstacle course, had vacuum pumps, magnetic levitation, belts made of unicorn snot and cost over £100,000 it might sell a few more, but then they would take 20 years to sell and they wouldn't have been born out of a test-bed for Rega's turntable line. And Roy would have despised it so much, it would have broken him.

 

[browellm]

Yeah, yeah. But thirty GRAND?

 

[Muddy Funster]

Yeah, yeah. But thirty GRAND?

AFAIK, Rega has used the same manufacturing cost calculations as it uses throughout. But, if you are buying in parts in ones and twos instead of 100s and 1,000s, economies of scale vanish. Especially if they are custom commissioned for the project.

I don't think the idea of spending £30k is crazy for a development test-bed. What is perhaps crazy is there is enough of a market for such a development test-bed outside of Rega's R&D department. That isn't just directed at Rega.