Turntables — SteinMusic Arco 40 Anniversary Turntable

The Arco 40 Anniversary Turntable is a limited-edition belt-driven turntable from SteinMusic, the German company founded in 1982, made to mark 40 years of the brand. Only 20 units are produced worldwide. Its most unusual feature is a 10 inch unipivot tonearm made from part of a violin bow, and arco is the musical term for playing a string instrument with the bow.

Key specs that matter

Speeds of 33 and 45 rpm are selected at the motor controller. The platter is a wood and metal sandwich of 2 mm cherry wood veneers reinforced by a 2.5 mm metal plate and weighs 2,000 g in total. The plinth is 19-ply laminated plywood that has been aged for over 25 years. The main bearing is a high-precision stainless steel double bearing, and SteinMusic states that the platter keeps turning for about four minutes after the motor stops. Drive comes from a Swiss Maxon precision motor with a dedicated controller, through an ultra-thin waxed, silver-plated nylon belt. The tonearm cable is handmade from copper over 50 years old and has no plastic insulation.

Engineering and use context

SteinMusic chose violin bow wood for the tonearm tube after finding that it performed better than carbon or other woods. The unipivot bearing rests the arm on a single point, which keeps friction very low. In the sandwich platter the damping of wood is combined with the stiffness of a metal plate, so the resonance of neither material dominates. The Maxon motor is paired with its own controller to hold the speed, while SteinMusic uses the thin waxed belt to filter out vibration from the motor. The tonearm cable leaves out plastic dielectric because SteinMusic considers that it affects the signal.

Pairing

On its unipivot arm the Arco 40 is meant for low to medium compliance MC cartridges, which in turn require a phono preamplifier offering MC gain.