VINYL VICTORIES True love weights
You know you’ll only enjoy all that famous warmth, rhythmic certainty and solid timing if you’ve got yourself a proper record player. Which is where we come in…
ROKSAN ATTESSA £995 / stuff.tv/attessa
Turntables are nothing new to Roksan – its very first product, back in 1985, was a record player called the Xerxes. But this new Attessa deck sees Roksan bringing some of its cachet and expertise down to what might be considered a realistic price.
Not that there are any signs of corners having been cut. The Attessa looks interesting by prevailing standards, and its single-piece plinth, isolation feet and bonded and weighted glass platter all suggest a thorough and uncompromised design. There’s a rigorously controlled motor and digital speed control, while the composite unipivot tonearm (with tracking weight and anti-skate controls integrated and a Roksan Dana cartridge pre-fitted) is as good-looking a device as it is an elegant piece of engineering. And a defeatable moving-magnet phono stage for ultimate system compatibility is the cherry on top of a well-made, handsome cake.
And it’s a tasty cake too… by which we mean it sounds great. Setup is the work of just a few minutes; and once you have a record playing, all the virtues of vinyl are apparent. The straightforward unity of the performance the Attessa describes is absolutely textbook: the entire frequency range integrates smoothly and sympathetically, and the management of rhythms and tempos is completely convincing. There’s just about enough attack to make more dynamic recordings take flight, and sufficient drive to prevent the weight and relative warmth of the overall presentation from sounding in any way stodgy.
You’re far from short of choice if you’ve a grand to spend on a record player, but the Roksan Attessa is a new cat among the sonic pigeons. Scoring highly for ease of use, performance, quality of construction and brand prestige, it makes a very strong case for itself.
Key specs
● 33.3/45rpm ● Switchable moving magnet phono stage ● 432x353x105mm, 6.3kg
STUFF SAYS The Attessa turntable lives up to the Roksan name for engineering and performance ★★★★★
There are a few hoops to jump through before you can play your records: fit the platter, attach the anti-skate weight and balance the arm.