Welcome to the Solid State Audio website
Your n°1 source for high-end audio equipment, cables and loudspeaker systems.
Welcome to the Solid State Audio website Your n°1 source for high-end audio equipment, cables and loudspeaker systems. |
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A reasonably normal childhood was spent building electric guitars, flying model aeroplanes, playing the clarinet and breeding budgies. At fourteen, Roy's mum asked him if he wanted a television or a record player in the house. Roy begged for a record player. His mum bought a telly! At eighteen years Roy built his first pair of loudspeakers in perfectly sealed cabinets. Not the first Rega product, but Roy was on his way. His interest in hi-fi evolved from a passion for music. 'Bliss' in those days was a live concert, a folk club, or any kind of record player. Then a flat mate demonstrated his hi-fi system: Garrard SP25 turntable, Sonotone 9TA cartridge, Rogers HG88 amplifier and Wharfedale speakers. Roy realised his record player had room for improvement.A Colaro deck turned up on a rubbish dump and after much adaptation became Roy's first hi-fi record deck. When a friend gave him an old Connoisseur the Collaro went back to the rubbish dump, and the modification began again. This turntable was reviewed in hi-fi Sound in 1972, as part of a series called Casebook, which examined readers hi-fi systems. In the early seventies the turntable was seen as such an unimportant part of the system that the reviewer assumed the excellent results must be due to the speakers. These were impossible to miss huge concrete affairs housing Super 8 drive units - but could hardly account for the sound quality of the whole system. The reviewer was puzzled.Roy was now working for Ford as a technical editor but spent most of his free time installing friend's hi-fi equipment and building loudspeakers to sell. He became a part time retailer and found he had to spend a ridiculous amount of time repairing new turntables before his conscience and common sense would allow him to sell them to others! Out of frustration and a strong feeling he could do better, the Planet turntable was born. Roy and a partner registered "Rega" (Tony RElph, Roy GAndy). In 1973 and for a couple of years Roy stayed at ford and made turntables in the evening, helped by his partners: mum (who agreed to help out for two weeks and stayed for fifteen years!) and a succession of lads. The first turntables were sold through Cosmocord in the UK and a year later under the Rega name in West Germany, Denmark and France.Roy was now able to leave Ford; he collected a redundancy check and promptly blew it on a factory in Rochford. Soon after the partner with Tony Relph split, Roy swapping his share of Rega. Terry Davies joined as Rega's financial administrator.The Rega products shown on our website are only a small selection of what's available, if you are interested in a Rega product other than those shown on our website: Mail Us |
© 2004-2012 Solid State Audio |
Rega Planar P7 |
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Rega Planar P7 - turntable (without phono cartridge)The new P7 is, in our opinion, the ultimate performance turntable at it's price available to the music-loving public. We designed the P7 with knowledge and expertise gained from our legendary flagship turntable the P9. The plinth is a complex CNC machined skeletal structure of medium lightweight fibre composite encased in highly ridged phenolic resin laminates - ultra lightweight, ultra rigid foundation for this high performance turntable. This results in the plinth being very strong and very light, which inturn improves the performance. The main bearing assembly is engineered to extremely tight tolerances. This results in virtually friction free rumble-less performance which, if lubricated correctly, will last your lifetime! The ceramic platter is something which we have desperately wanted to evolve from the P9 and use for other turntables, yet for a long time we have had difficulty in being able to produce such an expensive material for lower cost turntables. However, we believe this new incarnation of the ceramic platter bridges that gap! The P7 is finished in a highly attractive Aluminium metal extrusion surround. Which offers great rigidity and through clever machining produces an extremely low mass which gives a performance improvement. The all new TT PSU and motor anti-vibration circuit is a combination of the innovative P9 power supply along with an improved P25 anti-vibration motor drive feeding the P9 24V AC synchronous motor. The TT PSU uses a remote "wall wart" transformer therefore keeping the sources of hum & noise well away from sensitive parts such as the cartridge and phono leads. These attributes will enhance and control the turntables effectiveness to reproduce music. The RB700 carries forward the superior RB name with huge efficiency, and lives upto the RB tonearms much awarded history. The RB700 is clearly different in many ways to the previous 600 model, some of the key areas of improvement are the bias housing, bearing assemblies and the materials used on it. The RB700 tonearm is designed to make cartridges work harder, maximising the cantilever acceleration and travel as much as possible with the utmost accuracy within the cartridge body thus providing new levels of information.
Finishes available: Black, Silver or Cherry
12 months limited SSA warranty Price incl. VAT (excl. shipping costs) € 2199,-
Rega website: http://www.rega.co.uk/ |
Rega Planar P9 |
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Rega Planar P9 - turntable (without phono cartridge)The P9 is, in our opinion, the ultimate performance turntable available to the music-loving public. We designed the P9 with no financial restrictions whatsoever. The ceramic platter alone costs more to produce than our P5 turntable! With the right cartridge, you will be astonished at just how much information this turntable retrieves from your vinyl LP collection. The plinth is a complex CNC machined skeletal structure encased in highly ridged phenolic resin laminates. The equivalent to the carbon fibre 'monocoque' chassis of the formula one car - an ultra lightweight, ultra rigid foundation for this high performance turntable. The plinth of the new P9 uses a brand new material to hi-fi for the inner skeletal structure. It is an ultra lightweight fibre composite. This results in the plinth being even lighter than the previous Planar 9 and improves the performance. The main bearing assembly is engineered to extremely tight tolerances. This results in virtually friction free rumble-less performance which, if lubricated correctly, will last your lifetime. The platter is quite simply the most exotic material we have used to date in our turntable designs. It is made from pure ceramic; a material that you would otherwise find on missile nose cones or maybe insulation tiles found on Nasa's space shuttle. The reason for using such an exotic and difficult to produce material? It is the hardest material known to man apart from diamond! The P9 carries a decorative surround of exotic solid woods, which you can cleverly interchange if you so wish to give a different appearance. New technologies in CNC woodworking machinery have allowed Rega to produce its first technologically complex surround. The new P9 surround is considerably more attractive than its predecessor and externally much larger although through clever machining the new surround is lower in mass than the old which gives a performance improvement. The external power supply unit is a quart crystal locked system. To ensure accurate speed stability of the platter motor, two quartz crystal control reference oscillators have been utilised. This system produces a high frequency (3 MHz for 33 and 4 MHz for 45) signal, which is then divided down to feed generously rated, high current power fet amps. The output from these is very pure (<0.03 THD, this is a lower value than many power amplifiers output). The beauty of this power supply is that a dual phase is supplied to the motor, the phases of which may be varied in relation to each other. This means that the power supply phases are trimmed to eliminate all vibration from the motor. In turn, this means that there is no need for plinth suspension, which would ordinarily be required to eliminate motor resonance.We have replaced the RB900 with the all new RB1000. This tonearm takes thirty times longer to produce than an RB300. At present there are only two of our most highly trained and experienced technicians that can build this exotic tonearm. The RB1000 carries more technological changes over previous Rega tonearms than any produced during the last twenty years! Key areas of improvement can be found in the bearing assemblies, wiring and materials used. We have worked to redistribute and reduce mass in areas of the tonearm where mass is critical to performance. The easiest place to see these changes in evidence would be the new polished aluminium arm tube. It has no coatings of any type.The changes we have made over the RB900 have resulted in a tonearm with extremely high structural rigidity, combining ultra low friction movement together with massive stability. These attributes will make any cartridge mounted on this tonearm work harder than they have ever worked before. Do not be surprised if the first time you listen to familiar music, you hear detail that you have never heard before.
Finishes available: Black Ash, Maple or Cherry
12 months limited SSA warranty Price incl. VAT (excl. shipping costs) € 3899,-
Rega website: http://www.rega.co.uk/ |
Rega RB700 |
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Rega RB700 - tonearm (without phono cartridge)Fitted as standard on our P5 and P7 turntables the RB700 offers exceptional performance and build quality.
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Rega RB1000 |
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Rega RB1000 - tonearm (without phono cartridge)The award winning RB1000 takes almost twenty times longer to produce than an RB301. At present there are only two highly experienced technicians that can build this exotic tonearm. A "blue printing" parts and assembly process is used resulting in zero tolerance engineered assemblies offering ultimate performance. The bearings fit on to ground shafts and into the tonearm using interference fits. This means that no adhesive is required and therefore none of the associated (component - adhesive - component) losses in rigidity prevail. It is fitted to the plinth by a 3-point fixing which is CNC machined out of a single solid block of Stainless steel. This provides the strongest most rigid base structure possible for the tonearm and causes less stress on the plinth and the bearing housing, and therefore the least possible resonance. The RB1000 carries more technological changes over previous Rega tonearms than any other Rega tonearm produced during the last twenty years! Key areas of improvement can be found in the bearing assemblies, wiring and materials used. We have worked to redistribute and reduce mass in areas of the tonearm where mass is critical to performance. The easiest place to see these changes in evidence would be the polished aluminium arm tube. It has no coatings of any type. The changes made have resulted in a tonearm with extremely high structural rigidity, combining ultra low friction movement together with incredible stability. These attributes will make any cartridge mounted on this tonearm work harder than they have ever worked before. Do not be surprised if the first time you listen to familiar music, you hear detail that you have not heard before. 12 months limited SSA warranty Price incl. VAT (excl. shipping costs) € 1799,-
Rega website: http://www.rega.co.uk/ |
Rega Apheta |
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Rega Apheta - MC phono cartridgeWhen asked by our customers to produce an MC cartridge we decided to analyse existing designs on the market. We were astonished to discover that 99% of the products followed the same design principles established almost 50 years ago when materials and manufacturing processes were far less advanced than today. Conventional MC cartridges utilize a steel suspension system (tie wire) which creates a high amplitude H.F resonance (normally around 8-12Khz). Such resonance is unacceptable and is usually damped by a rudimentary piece of foam rubber. However the foam rubber deteriorates with age and cannot prevent the complete structure from vibrating and "ringing". The specifics and adjustment of the tie wire and damping determine whether the cartridge is under damped (bright) or over damped (warm and bass heavy). A happy medium is rarely achieved. This encouraged Rega to pursue a new direction inspired by modern materials and the basic laws of magnetism. The Rega Apheta contains neither a tie wire nor a foam damper. After 4 years and many hundreds of experiments the innovative design of the Apheta was complete. Moving coil aficionados will all recognise the long search for super clear high frequency combined with firm tight bass.Specifications:
12 months limited SSA warranty Price incl. VAT (excl. shipping costs) € 1449,-
Rega website: http://www.rega.co.uk/ |
