A year later, the company was restructured, with two new owner/directors joining the operation: George Moraitis and Jim Angelopoulos, both of whom now handle the company's business and finances, freeing Mr. In 2017, Döhmann introduced the less-costly Helix Two. My conclusion: 'How good is the Helix 1? Had it been installed in my system in 2005, I'd have written what I did about the Caliburn: 'no turntable in my experience comes close to its sonic performance and you are guaranteed to hear your favorite demo LPs, indeed all of your LPs, as you've never before heard themI don't care what 'table you use or have heard.' Please keep the quote's context in mind because many great turntables have come through here since 2005. I gave the original Döhmann Helix One ($40,000) a well-deserved rave because of its unique, innovative design, its high build quality, and of course its superlative sound. The original Helix One, launched in 2015, was produced and distributed under the aegis of Audio Union, an international consortium that included Sofia, Bulgariabased Thrax, where that turntable's parts were manufactured and assembled under the direction of Rumen Artarski, who studied electrical engineering at the Danish Technical University before moving to London and becoming a sound engineer. In 2013, after two years of research, Döhmann founded Döhmann Audio in Melbourne, Australia. And that goes to show that when you buy an expensive turntable, along with the quality of the product and its design efficacy, you should consider the company's financial viability, its longevity, and its commitment to its customersalthough sometimes stuff just happens anyway. What's more, the company ceased supporting the original, which I feel was a bad-faith move that put consumers in the crossfire of what should have been an internal dispute. Döhmann and Continuum parted company some time ago. It's also my third time reviewing a turntable for which designer Mark Döhmann was responsible, the first being the Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn ($150,000), which I reviewed in 2006, and which has been my reference ever since. This is the second time I've covered a Döhmann Helix One turntable, the first appearing in the March 2017 Stereophile. (As an aside, in terms of consistency and high build quality, SME has long set the standard.) And of course there are dozens if not hundreds of fanciful designsgleaming masses of metal-plated jewelry, acrylic towers, and the like that serve more as eye candy than ear candy and have little to do with playing records properlywhich, as expressed by Rega Research, is to be a 'vibration measuring machine': one that's properly tuned to be neither underdamped nor overdamped and that spins consistently at the correct speed (although that, too, can be a trap if overexecuted).ĭesigning and building an accurate vibration measuring machine is difficult, but even when that's been accomplished, building a second one and a third one and many more after thatall capable of performing identically and reliablyis at least as difficult as building the first one. Yet there are 'drummy,' awful-sounding low-mass concoctions and overdamped, high-mass sludgefest ones, too. There are authoritative low-mass designs, like the recently reviewed Rega Planar 10, and many great-sounding high-mass ones. Anyone who's been lucky enough to audition dozens if not hundreds of turntables and arms, as I have, knows that despite the simplicity of the concept, they all sound different from each other for reasons not grounded in magicthough sometimes, as with loudspeakers, a just-right combination of ideas and compromises can produce magic.

Of course, designing a good-sounding, high-performance turntable is considerably more difficult. Now, just bolt an arm to the base at the correct distance, set up a cartridge, and enjoy! Build the motor into the base, or put it in an outboard podeither way, you're in business. Machining a correctly sized pulley and driving the platter with a belt requires minimal math skills to achieve the correct speeds. The motor can be an off-the-shelf AC synchronous type, fed directly by the electricity from a wall socket. All that matters is in plain sight: Start with a base of wood, MDF, or acrylic add some isolation 'feet' for it to rest upon, and a spindle bearing such as any competent machine shop can fabricate, topped by a platter of acrylic or aluminum or suchlike.

Designing and building a turntable isn't all that difficult.

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