Turntables — Rekkord Audio F110

The F110 is the entry-level sub-chassis turntable from Rekkord Audio, handmade at St. Georgen, a Black Forest town in Germany. It sits one step above the F100 and adds a floating sub-chassis. Rekkord belongs to the team behind Pro-Ject, and much of the F110's automatic mechanism goes back to earlier Dual turntable designs.

Key specs that matter

The F110 is a fully automatic belt-drive deck with a DC motor and two speeds, 33 and 45rpm. Rekkord quotes 0.07% wow and flutter and 65dB of signal-to-noise. The ultra-low-mass aluminium tonearm carries an Audio-Technica AT3600L cartridge on a carbon-fibre-reinforced headshell. The turntable measures 420 x 133 x 360mm and weighs 4.8kg. List prices are 399 euros for the F110 and 449 euros for the F110P, the version with an integrated phono preamplifier.

Engineering and use context

The automatic system, the tonearm and the damped aluminium platter all sit on a floating sub-chassis that is mechanically decoupled from the wooden plinth. This isolates the playback parts from outside vibration better than the simpler pressed-wood construction of the F100. The heavy aluminium platter helps keep the speed steady. Rekkord fits the tonearm with its own steel-tipped bearings, and both downforce and anti-skating arrive pre-adjusted. Cartridge weight is fixed and alignment is done in advance, so the deck needs no setup out of the box. A press on start moves the arm over the first groove and lowers it. When the side finishes, the arm rises, swings back to its rest, and the motor switches off. Despite the automation, the arm can still be raised and lowered by hand at any point on the record.

Pairing

With the F110P, the built-in phono stage lets the turntable connect straight to a hi-fi system or to portable powered speakers. The standard F110 works with an external phono preamp, or with any amplifier that offers an MM phono stage of its own.

Alternatives

The Rekkord F300 is the next automatic sub-chassis turntable up the range, with further refinements over the F110.