Rega Planar 8 Turntable
Australian Hi-Fi 37
Says Rega: ‘This new construction makes the
new Planar 8 skeletal plinth 30 per cent lighter
than the original RP8 while offering increased
rigidity over the previous model.’
As for that high pressure laminate, it’s
actually a Polaris HPL made by Italian man-
ufacturer Abet Laminati, which has been
making synthetic resins for more than 60
years.
The section of the plinth between the
platter bearing and the tonearm mount is
reinforced and stiffened by an added layer
of metal on top of the HPL and some other
material (maybe magnesium or an added
HPL layer... I couldn’t determine) under-
neath. Also underneath the plinth are four
rubber (I was told that it’s Santoprene, but
was not able to confirm this) feet that are
not height-adjustable, so you’ll need to
sit the Rega Planar 8 on a perfectly flat,
perfectly level surface to obtain best perfor-
mance. One option here that I would like to
wholeheartedly recommend to you is a Rega
wall bracket, an ultra lightweight aluminium
wall bracket available in black or white that,
unlike any solution that involves placing
the turntable on something that’s ultimately
connected to your floor (the bounciest bit of
any home), will almost always provide either
complete or ‘best’ isolation.
As with all Rega turntables, the platter is
made from glass... or, to be more specific,
because importantly, it isn’t just a piece
of glass, it’s actually three-pieces of two
different types of high-quality Pilkington
glass that are bonded together, rather like
the technique used for the fly-wheels of
old-fashioned boat engines, where there was
a thick section around the circumference,
then a thinner section connecting this to
the drive shaft. This technique delivers the
best fly-wheel effect for the smallest diame-
ter and the minimum weight. Rega has used
exactly the same technique with its glass
platter, except that it has three thicknesses
across the width of the platter, running from
the thickest around the circumference to
the thinnest nearest the spindle. The glass
platter is topped by a black felt slip mat.
Just to be clear, when I stated in the previ-
ous paragraph that ‘all’ Rega turntables used
glass platters, this is not actually true, be-
cause when Rega formed the company back
in July 1973 (it was then a partnership by
Tony (Re)lph and Roy (Ga)ndy, but is now
solely owned by Gandy) its first turntable
(the Planet) did not use a glass platter... that
didn’t happen until 1976 and the introduc-
tion of the Planar 2. Also, a few other Rega
turntables over the intervening 46 years
have employed other platter materials, nota-
bly the ceramic platter of the Planar 9.
Underneath the glass platter is an alumin-
ium sub-platter that rotates on a hardened
tool steel spindle inside a custom brass hous-
ing and is driven by two round belts made
from ethylene propylene diene terpolymer
that attach to a pulley mounted directly to
the shaft of a 24-volt synchronous a.c. motor.
The motor is mounted to the plinth using
a technique Rega first used on its flagship
Naiad turntable that is said to reduce the
transmission of vibration from the motor to
the plinth while simultaneously allowing less
movement of the motor in order to improve
speed stability. As for the belts themselves,
Rega says that the bespoke rubber compound
from which they’re made has been in devel-
opment for three years, and is manufactured
on tools designed by Rega itself that ensure
they’re ‘perfectly round’ and ‘dimensionally
accurate’. EPDT itself is said to have a more
consistent elasticity modulus than any other
type of flexible turntable belt, while any re-
maining inconsistencies in elasticity are then
eliminated by the use of dual belts, rather
than just the one.
The 24-volt a.c. supply is delivered to the
motor by Rega’s Neo power supply (PSU)
which not only offers a super-clean 24-volts
that is completely unaffected by any changesin the mains/line voltage, but also uses a
digital signal processor (DSP) in combination
with a crystal oscillator to provide a stable
a.c. frequency, and offers the possibility of
fine speed adjustment. I say ‘possibility’ sim-
ply because Rega says it hand-tunes each Neo
PSU specifically for the Planar 8 turntable for
which it’s providing the power... it doesn’t
just ship a ‘standard’ Neo with each turnta-
ble. This means that when you get your Neo/
Planar 8 it will rotate at exactly the selected
speed (33.33 and 45rpm) without the need
for adjustment.
However, in the event the speed ever does
drift, or you wish the platter to rotate at a
non-standard speed (perhaps so you can play
along with an LP using a fixed-pitch musical
instrument, such as a piano) it is possible to
adjust the speed using a small hex key and
the appropriate hole on the rear panel. Rega
says that the Neo PSU not only drives the
motor, but also: ‘the turntable’s anti-vibration
circuit, which is situated beneath the turntable.’
I looked in vain underneath the turntable for
this anti-vibration circuit. According to local
Australian distributor Synergy Audio Visual,
there is circuitry inside the motor that sends
signals back to the PSU which are used to
adjust the DSP’s operating parameters—pre-
sumably for voltage and/or frequency—to
minimise motor vibration. [Editor’s Note: We
requested more information from Rega about this,
but it was not made available to us at the time of
going to press.]