If your slagging off a companies products & potentially damaging there reputation then you have a moral duty to show people your evidence.
Moral duty? I'm not sure I agree with you, I think sharing an opinion can be enough, but I can do as you ask.
The best way to understand ProJect construction philosophy is that they look for the cheapest way to make each part. You could say 'of course, don't all manufacturers' but if you make things too cheaply you can sacrifice reliability and robustness. When you know the approach you can look at ProJect turntables and see it all over the place but to fulfill my
moral duty I'll give you a few examples from my experience.
What is the cheapest way you could make a platter/spindle assembly? You take a flat disk of cheap material and you shove a spindle through the middle of it. That's what ProJect often did. An MDF disk with a steel rod pushed through it forming the bearing spindle. Two pieces of cheap material.
Yeah ok but it works perfectly well you say. It does, but it's compromised. MDF is not the best material for a platter acoustically or structurally. It can absorb moisture and it's quite soft. Anyone who's owned MDF furniture knows how poorly it holds screws but ProJect use tons of it in less than ideal configurations.
One deck I had sported a very wobbly/buckled platter. Someone had obviously accidentally lent on the platter and the soft MDF had deformed at the spindle. Another deck had a much thicker MDF platter but the spindle was so thin it bent!
Rega use a separate sub-platter on all of their decks which avoid this potential problem. If you lean on the platter it will simply flip up away from the sub-platter until it hits the plinth. It also means the motor noise is not connected directly to the bit the record is sitting on but we'll leave it at that, better move on.
Remember we're talking about building things in the cheapest way possible? I'll point out a few features on the tonearms I fixed.
What is the cheapest way you could make a tonearm tube and headshell assembly? You do what ProJect did, you flatten an aluminium tube at one end and put two holes in it. Again, it works. So where is the compromise? Well you need a fingerlift but it would cost more to built it into the head-shell so make it a separate piece held on my the cartridge bolts. And how do you attach the other end of the tube to the bearing boss? A single tiny grub screw. So it's quite easy for the tube to pull out, ripping the wires, or to rotate a bit throwing the azimuth down the toilet. But hey, it's cheap!
Last one. I had a deck where the platter bearing had fallen out of the bottom of the deck. On investigation the bearing flange was attached to the underside of the (MDF) plinth with three small wood screws. Rega bearings go in from the top so any downward force just pushes the flange against the plinth. The ProJect bearing was solely supported by the three screws so the platter had been lent on and burst the screws out of the MDF.
I scratched my head wondering why they'd done it that way, then I realized. Everything else screwed onto the underside of the plinth. The motor, the switch, the arm screws etc. Nothing else screwed on from the top. Screwing the bearing on from the underside as well meant that on the production line there was no need to turn the plinth over! The integrity of the bearing mounting was badly compromised but it was slightly quicker to build.
I could give you other examples, I really could, but if you examine the decks you can find your own. I just don't like your implication that I might be criticizing these turntables for some ulterior reason. I'm not a Rega fanboy, I just appreciate good design and I'm honest about what I see. I fixed the turntables above and sold them. They worked perfectly and sounded good, especially for the price I sold them for, but I was and am uncomfortable selling products I know have inherent weaknesses.
And that is the reason I say that, given the choice, buy a Rega rather than a ProJect. Are Rega turntables perfect and fault free? No and not always but that's not the point. They are better built than ProJect decks of a similar price and that's enough.
