Gold Note

Gold Note is an Italian high-end audio maker founded in 2012 by engineer Maurizio Aterini, his wife Elena Basciano and partner Alessio Oronti, with headquarters in the hills near Florence. It grew out of a design studio Aterini set up in 1992 to engineer products for other companies, and today it builds turntables, tonearms, cartridges, phono stages, digital sources, amplifiers, loudspeakers, cables and racks under one roof.

Range & what it's known for

Analogue is the historic core. The belt drive turntables run from the Valore through the Pianosa, which inherited technology from the Mediterraneo and Giglio, to the Mediterraneo with its curved plinth of aged Italian walnut. Most of them carry the B-5 tonearm, a design Aterini drew in the 1990s with weight distributed along its length for balance, still used with few changes. Cartridges include the Vasari, Donatello, Machiavelli and Tuscany families. On the electronics side there are the compact 5.2 series (DS-5.2 streamer, PH-5.2 phono stage with touchscreen control of gain and impedance, HP-5.2 headphone amplifier), the larger IS-1000 integrated, the PA-1175 power amplifier, the HP-10 Class-A headphone amp and the CD-1 player, while the Diana I and Diana II floorstanders lead the speaker range.

Who owns it and where it's made

Gold Note is privately held by its founding team, with Aterini as the engineering lead. Engineering and production are based at Gold Note's Tuscan headquarters, and the brand presents its products as made in Italy.

The lineup in this catalog

Turntables, cartridges, electronics and loudspeakers. The cheapest Gold Note item here costs about EUR 1,000 and the dearest well over EUR 30,000.

Who it's for

A vinyl-first system matched from one Italian maker is the setting in which Gold Note fits best. A Valore turntable with a Gold Note cartridge is the usual entry, moving up to the Pianosa or Mediterraneo and a PH-5.2 phono stage, then to the IS-1000 or separate amplification and Diana loudspeakers.