Thunder

HiFi News UK: Beautifully designed and exquisitely engineered, this no compromise deck is simple to use and should provide a lifetime of hassle-free performance. If you’re in the market for a top-class vinyl spinner that requires minimum fettling then the Thunder could be the answer. It’s massy built and state of the art electronics combine to give a sound that’s expansive, rich with detail and effortlessly involving. 

Thunder is the first turntable we have manufactured with our new revolutionary ‘Silencer Platter 3’ design, one of the most significant improvements in our turntable designs. The Thunder is designed and built for exceptional music reproduction, outperforming turntables costing much more. A 70mm solid aluminium chassis forms the base of the turntable, on which up to three arm attachments can be fitted for either 9” or 12” tone-arms of any make. The 50mm thick platter is driven by its remotely sited motor and AlphaDIG electronic control offers a perfect supply to the motor. The turntable base has been designed for optimum stability; the large footprint of the table generates more stability, to increase the weight concentration at the base of the turntable. The Thunder is engineered to provide exceptional sound, but its form is also attractively contemporary. 

•A 50mm solid turntable platter made of aluminium with Silencer inserts. The platter is made of a very soft alloy to optimize its periodic resonance, and is coated on the rear side with resonance-reducing material. For the Silencer- Platter3 the development target was clearly defined: Elimination of vibration due to impacting airborne sound. Elimination of bearing noise, increase of the gyrating mass. Serious elimination of all frequencies, especially in the range 400-6000Hz. This was achieved by drilling 24 holes into the turntable. The manufacturing process for the precision of these holes was once more refined. The holes are drilled and afterwards separately “line-bored”. This allows a clearance of less than 1/100mm. Perfect conditions for the force-fitting of the 24 silencer modules. The “silencers" are now an integral part of the turntable - but highly absorbing. Existing vibration energy is quickly reduced and the Platter is immediately steadied. To avoid unbalances through the additional holes these are manufactured in the same setting as the outer contour. In this way the holes are absolutely true to the centre of the turntable. As you can see, we have done everything to develop a potentially perfect product.

•The bearing is the heart of every turntable. Through fundamental research and development, we have invented a bearing with the ideal performance characteristics of exact fit, extremely low noise, very low friction and long term stability. The platter bearing component is manufactured from special hardened and polished steel, with an extremely hard tungsten carbide ball at its base. The bearing housing uses perfectly matched and ‘aged’ sinter bronze inserts which are self-lubricating; and therefore maintenance free. At the base of the bearing, we use our specially developed ‘high-tech’ material TIDORFOLON. Our bearing runs dry - without oil.

•The external drive motor of the turntable is run by its own electronic controller, called the AlphaDIG. It is a brand new design where fully digital output stages and a quartz locked technology is used. It is impervious to the negative effects of mains voltage fluctuations and household appliances that produce ‘noisy’ mains that can have a very great detrimental effect on AC motors and therefore the turntable performance and ultimately the sound. And a quartz precision DSP then produces a perfect sine wave at 24VAC to run the motor, resulting in a perfectly steady and constant platter rotation. The AlphaDIG control is the perfect design solution.

•The tone arm mounting plates are adjustable. The mounting of any desired tone arm is possible, with a maximum of 3 tone arm mounting plates on one turntable. • Three adjustable feet for simple macro and micro adjustments to level the turntable. 

• The high mass platter (with its inertia) is an integral part of the turntable concept. Very low bearing friction, perfect motor drive control and large platter inertia guarantee perfect synchronization and the best sound. Highest precision manufacturing in Germany guarantees reliability of this turntable. To make sure that every Thunder is exactly the same we produce nearly every part on high precision computer controlled machines.