Originally Swiss (nowadays rather German) company Thorens belongs, no doubt, to the most deserving and respected turntable manufacturers. I myself was a couple of years ago a satisfied user of (almost) relic representative of the famous 3xx series. It was, to be exact, the 325 that I bought after a hard „fight” on a German Ebay auction. It replaced an even older Polish Fonica in my system which was not too difficult to „beat” but anyway I remember that it was a really nice upgrade of my system, that served me well for around 3 years (and then it went to… Sweden – I wonder if it is still there). At the time I was using only MM cartridges with my (then) favorite Japanese Excel (maybe you haven’t heard this name before but they did a lot of great OEM cartridges for more famous brands). So for me Thorens is not only „the famous brand I heard so much about but never had anything to do with it”, but rather a part of my audiophile experience that allowed me to gain my own great portion of respect for Thorens engineers. It sounded really well back then (with Darek Kulesza’s phonostage), easily competing with the Audio Note CD1 Player that was also a part of my rig at the time. Considering that past experience I surely got interested in Thorens again when they re-activated the company recently, offering also new models. I wanted to find out whether they manage to stand up to the legend created in the past. But even though I spoke to their Distributor a couple of times about some review there was always something standing in the way and so I didn’t listen to any of the new models. Until now – finally I got my chance and one of the reasonably priced decks – TD 309 – landed in my room. Better late than never as they say.

SOUND

Records used during the review (a selection):

• Thorens, 125th Anniversary LP, ATD125, Thorens, LP.
• The Ben Webster Quintet, Soulville, M GV-8274, Verve Records, LP.
• Daniel Gaede, The tube only vinyl, TACET L117, LP.
• Dead Can Dance, Spiritchaser, 4AD/Mobile Fidelity, MOFI 2-002, LP.
• Albeniz, Suita Espanola, KIJC 9144, LP.
• Kate Bush, The sensual world, Audio Fidelity, AFZLP 082, 180 g LP.
• Patricia Barber, Companion, Premonition/Mobile Fidelity, MFSL 2-45003, 180 g LP.
• U2, Joshua Tree, UNIVERSAL, UNILP75094, 180 g, LP.
• AC/DC,Live, EPIC, E2 90553, LP.

TD 309 is one of the special additions to the present Thorens offer as it is a completely new design and not just a version of some older one. Not that I see anything wrong with continuing the good company tradition, but to find out how good the present Thorens designers are one should listen to something they really created. There is one thing everybody has to notice right away and that makes TD309 different from any other model this company ever made – its shape. There is no classic, rectangular sub-chassis. Instead, there is a mdf board (in this case painted in a very attractive red color) in the shape of… an arrow, I would say. Does this arrow point Thorens in the new direction? Hard to say but it surely looks damn good. From what I heard from the distributor this model already made some others obsolete, so maybe it really determines a new direction for the future of this manufacturer. The arm is mounted in one end of the “arrow” and in the other there is a weight that needs to be placed to balance the arm’s weight and to level the whole design. It is quite difficult to classify this design – in most places I checked they called it a suspended one and there is in fact a 3-point suspension – in each of the three “legs” there is an adjustable spring. According to the maker, these footers and the triangular synthetic brace connecting them create the decoupling base to support the top deck to which the platter, motor, and arm are mounted. This triangular brace holds the RCA posts, grounding post, and on the other side also the power inlet. The turntable sports a low noise, low voltage electronically speed controlled DC Motor. The torque is passed from the motor to the aluminum sub-platter with a rubber belt. The platter is made of some kind of quartz glass and you get a felt matte to put it on.

The arm was specifically designed for this turntable. TP92 is a cardan-suspended 9-incher which affords trim of overhang, azimuth, VTA and anti-skating. Thorens dubs their resonance suppression efforts for the straight aluminum wand - the first is a ring which Thorens claims has exactly the right mass and sits exactly in the right spot – so users should not move it under any circumstances. Secondly, inside the wand there is this synthetic tube which deliberately doesn’t line the aluminum shaft to instead damp its surface. The counterweight sits low to align with the pickup’s center of gravity and bearing. The removable head shell has a lateral hole in it to fix the cartridge to it and to allow for the overhang adjustment by moving the pickup along the hole.
The price of TD309 also includes a cartridge – it's an AudioTechnica AT-95E (MM). It's surely not a pricey pickup but it delivers a decent sound. What the manufacturer had in mind (I guess) was to offer an almost complete plug'n'play device with a simple but decent sounding cartridge that can later be replaced with something better. But using this one will allow many users to get used to setting it up and if something goes wrong the loss won't hurt too much.
There is an upgrade available for this turntable that I had a chance to try out – Teddy Pardo's external power supply. There's been a lot of fuzz about this company making power supplies for Naim devices but also for the very popular in Poland rDac. The Polish Thorens distributor delivered such a power supply designed for TD309 along with turntable for me to judge if there actually is some improvement to the sound. Additionally, as I don't have a MM phonostage, the distributor also delivered the Perreaux SXV2 Silhouette and I used it throughout the review.

Setting this turntable up is as simple as it gets so it doesn’t take long. After that all that is left to do is… listening to the music. Yes, that’s right – enjoying music, and not analyzing the sound. I’m pretty confident that 99% of the people who buy TD309 as their first-ever turntable become vinyl aficionados for life. The sound is coherent, smooth and „soft” in this special, analogue way, so one won’t find any sign of digital roughness here. The AT MM cartridge is capable of delivering quite well extended and powerful bass – the AC/DC concert was dynamic, powerful, with nice, fast, and hard guitar riffs. Also when playing classical repertoire, the Thorens did quite well handling the enormous dynamics and energy of symphonic orchestra. More resolution would be appreciated to reproduce all the details and nuances, and to precisely show the whole depth of the soundstage. But in general my impression was very good, because even though the orchestra was missing some depth, yet the coherence of the presentation, its dynamics and quite impressive emotional load allowed me the forget about weaknesses and simply enjoy Mozart, Tchaikovsky or Bizet.

Also beautiful female vocal recordings sounded pretty good on the Swiss/German deck. Surely one could point out elements that might be improved but there was nothing that would clearly spoil the presentation. There was lots of information in the sound about voice texture, singing techniques, some tiny nuances. Soundstage was also quite big and presented in an orderly way with the vocalist in front, the band at least a step back, although I must say I would appreciate a bit more depth. As long as I was listening to some small band everything was fine – the presentation was 3D enough. Still in general Thorens shows one big, coherent picture rather than precisely placed phantom images. Having said that let me add that, firstly, it clearly didn't disturb me enjoying the presentation. Secondly, I was pretty sure that it was the inexpensive cartridge responsible for that.

To confirm all that and to better judge what this deck is capable of I decided to mount my own Audio-Technica AT33PTG. It's a MC cartridge that costs (in retail prices) around 4 times more than the AT-92.
In the beginning, in order not to introduce too many changes at once, I still used the Perreaux phonostage that I later changed for my ESELabs Nibiru – a fabulous phono that I had been using for a couple of years. Cartridge exchange resulted in more details and nuances appearing in the more resolute sound. At the same time the bass range, while slammer, better extended and richer, lost a bit of pace and definition. Not that those changes were significant but they were noticeable and somehow expected as usually the MMs offer more taut, more dynamic and better defined low end (that's of course a general statement not a golden rule that applies in each and every case). The important thing was that this catchy liquidity and coherence of the presentation that I enjoyed a lot with the cheaper cartridge was still there, meaning that the credit for that should mainly go to the deck and arm.

And then there is the soundstage – I listened to the Thorens also with the (already reviewed) Genesis 7.1f loudspeakers that thanks to their dipole tweeter system delivered fantastic depth. The AT-92 obviously significantly limited this soundstage depth, but with the AT33PTG all limitation in this area was gone – the depth was really great, distances between instrument almost „palpable”, the instruments themselves well defined in the 3D space, with lots and lots of air around them. Long story short – the change of cartridge effected in really significant improvement of the sound of the whole rig – the change was comparable to watching the same movie in 3D.
There was one slightly annoying element though, obvious mostly in female vocals - a gentle harshness in the upper midrange/lower treble that wasn't audible before (or I didn't realize it was there). I assumed it had something to with the Perreaux that was most likely not fully broken in. I did not hear that with the less expensive MM cartridge, which was a bit strange, but all I could do was to check my theory and plug in my Nibiru. The harshness was immediately gone which seemed to confirm my assumption. Surely I could do the distributor's job and break the Perreaux fully in, but I preferred to enjoy the music so I kept the ESELabs in the system. The sound with the ESELabs became more... noble. Yes, I realize it is hardly an audiophile description but it’s the best I can find. It was hard to point out particular advantages of the Nibiru over the SXV2 Silhouette, but the impression was similar to the one I had when I changed Opel for Audi – similar power, similar features but no doubt it was an upgrade. The same thing happened here – the sound seemed richer, more realistic and palpable but I was unable to point out the elements of the sound that made the difference.

Finally, I added the final upgrade - Teddy Pardo power supply which was in fact the final touch. It was easier to hear that when I removed it from system than when I first plugged it in, but it didn't change the fact that it really was an upgrade. What were the improvements? Well, the sound became more relaxed and better saturated – it might suggest that there was something wrong with the sound without Pardo, but that wasn't true. With it, the sound became even better than before – the black background became even darker which made everything more distinct, sounds and colors better saturated. And even though I did not miss that before, now when the sound became more relaxed I really appreciated that. There was no restriction to the dynamics and the soundstage became even more orderly, with all elements of the puzzle falling in the most accurate spots. One might say it wasn't too much of a change but when you gain just a bit in the sound quality you may not fully appreciate it until you lose it again. Then you start to miss that little something and... you need it back even if it costs you more than you wish it would.
What I got in the end - with the Teddy Pardo's power supply, a better (but still not too expensive) cartridge and a good phonostage – was a really good, satisfying sound that I enjoyed a lot. It proved a lot of potential in this deck and arm. The TD309 also proved to be a quite versatile machine – with the inexpensive MM cartridge the Thorens really rocked. With the more expensive MC it proved to be more sophisticated, offering detailed, three-dimensional sound, and still nice pace and rhythm which allowed me to enjoy lots of jazz and blues records. So it seems that the Thorens TD309 is a great starting place for a newbie to analogue addiction – an easy to setup, very well sounding, versatile device that might be upgraded to achieve an even better sound.
If you already are a vinyl aficionado then using this very good deck and arm and adding to them a nice cartridge and a phonostage plus external power supply and (one thing I forgot about before) a better IC you might achieve a really very good sound without selling one of your kidneys to pay for it. OK, whatever you do the TD309 won't become a high-end turntable but I am sure as hell that it will let you enjoy most records in your collection. Plus – it looks awesome in red! Put something like that in your living room and all your guests will be thrilled – I know that not everybody cares about the look of his rig but those who do will appreciate this design a lot. Additionally, I saw on the Internet that there is a cover available for this deck – something Michell-style, so not a full cover but good enough to keep the deck and arm clear of dust. Not a perfect solution, perhaps, but better than none. So if you decide to buy the Thorens TD309 you might expect a really nice sound from the start and a couple of options to upgrade the sound quality if you later choose to. In my opinion it is a really interesting proposal considering its price.

DESCRIPTION

Thorens TD309 is a tree-point suspended turntable with a triangular plinth and decoupled motor. The latter is decoupled with re-purposed spiders. These allow lateral movement preventing vertical though, which seems to be the best solution. There is no classic, rectangular plinth but just a MDF board that took the shape of an arrow/triangle/fish (that's from my little daughter). It is painted with a very attractive, red color (black is also available). At the one end there is a tonearm mounted (TP92, especially designed for this deck), on the other there is a counterweight to exactly balance the arm weight and thus keep the turntable leveled. The plinth is placed on three round springs hidden in three feet, and each corner contains a hole for a hex key to adjust each footer height (but remember that this also changes a compliance of those springs so first try to level whatever the turntable is placed on without using the hex key). Beneath there is a metal triangle fixed from the top side to the plinth and to the suspension from the bottom. This triangular brace holds the RCA posts, the grounding post, and on the other side also power inlet. The turntable sports a low noise, low voltage electronically speed controlled DC Motor. The torque is passed from the motor to the aluminum sub-platter with a rubber belt. The platter is made of some kind of quartz glass and you get a felt matte to put it on.
The TP92 tonearm is a cardan-suspended 9-incher which affords trim of overhang, azimuth, VTA and anti-skating. Thorens dubs their resonance suppression efforts for the straight aluminum wand - the first is a ring which Thorens claims has exactly the right mass and sits exactly in the right spot – so user should not move it under any circumstances. Secondly, inside the wand there is this synthetic tube which deliberately doesn’t line the aluminum shaft to instead damp its surface. The counterweight sits low to align with the pickup’s center of gravity and bearing. The removable head shell shows has a lateral hole in it to fix the cartridge to it and to allow to adjust an overhang by moving the pickup along this hole. The price of the turntable also includes a MM cartridge – AudioTechnica AT-95E. The TD309 is equipped with a simple power supply that might be replaced with the external one manufactured by Teddy Pardo. There is one more additional option – a simple cover.

Polish Distributor: Best-Audio

Contact: ul. Traugutta 25 | 90-113 Łódź | Polska

tel.: 42 633 59 07 | 42 630 01 84

URL: www.bestaudio.pl