80 August2019nstereophile.com
HIFICTION THALES TTT-SLIM II/SIMPLICITY II
My only criticism
was that the Thales
player didn’t equal my
reference in its ability
to shrug off surface
noise. (What is it with
DG records from just
about any era? Is it my
bad luck, or were their
records less durable
than average?)Listening to the Thorens TD 124/Simplicity II combination
Though it may strike some as faint praise, the first thing that
impressed me about the sound of the Thales arm on my
vintage Thorens was that it maintained my system’s core
musical strengths: Lines of notes moved in time with real-
istic momentum and flow, and neither musical timing nor
pitch relationships became the least bit ponderous or un-
clear—high praise, indeed, considering that I’ve been spoiled
by such musically accomplished arms as the Schick, the
GrooveMaster II, Sorane ZA-12 and SA-1.2, and, of course,
the EMT 997. The scale that opens Maazel and the Vienna
Philharmonic’s Sibelius Symphony No.4 (Decca SXL 6236)
was as spellbinding as ever. In the chords that open Men-
delssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by Peter
Maag and the LSO (Decca/Speakers Corner SXL 2060),
the harmonies between the notes played by the flutes and,
ultimately, the oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horn, sounded
true, not sour. And the moderate swing tempo of Frank
Sinatra’s “Oh, You Crazy Moon,” from Moonlight Sinatra
(Reprise FS-1018), was propelled by relentless rhythm guitar
and drum kit, sufficiently steady that Sinatra’s own timing
shifts dazzled rather than annoyed.
Among the other records I tried was a long-time favorite:
1979’s Manzanita, by the Tony Rice Unit (Rounder 0092).
Apart from his groundbreaking lead work, guitarist Rice is
celebrated by fellow musicians for his no-less-accomplished
rhythm playing, characterized by a unique combination of
fluidity and hard-charging momentum. The Thorens-Thales
combination perfectly captured that sound—in both Rice’s
playing and its real-time influence on the other musicians
in the ensemble—on “Blue Railroad Train” and others. No
less delightful was the way this combination reproduced the
tautly sustained notes from Todd Phillips’ double bass on
“Midnight on the Stormy Deep” and highlighted the stylistic
differences between David Grisman and Sam Bush’s mando-
lin playing throughout the album.rard-based player and conveyed
the same eerie languidity, right
down to the last weird, disem-
bodied A at the very end. And
the Thales combo wasn’t far off
the mark in its ability to suggest
the instrument’s corporeality, al-
though my Garrard allowed it to
sound meatier still. Another good
piano recording—by Reinbert De
Leeuw, performing early pieces
by Erik Satie (Telefunken 6.42198
AW)—sounded similarly good via
the Slim II and Simplicity II, with
good weight and concomitantly
good scale.
But there’s nothing like Satie’s
music, with its reliance on slow
tempos and richly voiced sus-
Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to the
Electric Recording Company’s reissue of Henriette
Faure’s recording of Book One of Debussy Preludes
for solo piano (EMI^3 /ERC 350 C 004). Thus, I can
say with confidence that the Thales player allowed
the piano every bit the same (large) scale as my Gar-
tained chords, to show up speed instability of whatever ori-
gin—and my copy of that De Leeuw LP has a bit of a warp
in it: I’m accustomed to hearing from it a bit of warp-wow. I
went back and forth a number of times between the Thales-
and Garrard-based players, and there was no question that
unwanted pitch variations were less severe through the
latter, presumably owing to the greater effective length—
307mm, vs the Thales’s 229mm—of my EMT 997 tonearm.
All other things being equal, the longer the tonearm, the less
severe the audible effects of warped and off-center records.
On one of those freewheeling Saturday mornings when I
felt like annoying my neighbor—the one who plants things
on my lawn and whose dog is bigger and even barkier than
mine—I rooted around for the perfect loud Neil Young song
to blast and hit upon the live version of “Ohio” from Journey
Through the Past (2 LPs, Reprise 2XS 6480), performed
by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Calvin Samuels on
bass and Johnny Barbata on drums. On this track, which
segues brilliantly from the last note of a live performance
of Steve Stills’s “Find the Cost of Freedom” (both songs are
in D, played with drop-D tuning on the guitars), Stills and
Young both play big, hollow-body Gretsch guitars that seem
forever on the verge of feedback—a sound I adore: they
scream with thick, sustain-y notes that complement the very
emotional vocal performances. On the Thales, that all came
across as well as I’ve ever heard, along with a fantastically
impactful, resonant sound from drummer Johnny Barbata’s
ride toms. It was a satisfying and altogether moving experi-
ence. No one called the cops.
One of my two favorite versions of the Bruckner Sym-
phony No.8 is the one recorded in 1964 by Eugen Jochum
and the Berlin Philharmonic (2 LPs, Deutsche Grammo-
phon 138 918/19); my copy is an early tulip pressing, and it
sounded thrilling on the Thales. The Wagner tubas in the
first movement sounded especially real—at the other end of
the dynamic spectrum, so did the very delicate harp playing
in the scherzo and the adagio. The Thales combo seemed
to do the best it could with DG’s less-than-lushly-textured
string sound, but it was the equal of my Garrard in scale.
3 Actually Ducretet Thomson but relabeled for the reissue owing to international
copyright restrictions.Above: A closer look at
how the headshell’s angle
changes as the arm swings
inward. Left: Tonearm parts
in the Thales factory.HEADSHELL ANGLE PHOTO: ART DUDLEY THALES FACTORY IMAGE: MICHAEL FREMER