Rega P5

Round and round it goes

By Brent Burmester

August 2004

Rega P5 turntable. $1999

The era of audio information carried on round flat rotating things is drawing to a close. Never mind DVD – solid-state memory is already beginning to edge it out. Despite this, there are still new record players to review, which suggests digital has yet to deliver the heart and soul of music as good analogue can.

The machine under review is Rega’s P5. The discerning (and aged) will know Rega by reputation – this British manufacturer has knocked out value for money vinyl-spinners since the 1970s, and their RB250 and RB300 tonearms are legendary. Rega is one of those less-is-more, hairshirt, I’ll-have-none-of-your-new-fangled-nonsense-type companies that has stuck to a simple and successful record playing formula.

First, get a slab of something flat, and screw three rubbery feet to it. Cut a hole in it through which the sub-platter can protrude. Lay a solid platter on top of that  - glass is good - with a felt mat to interface with the record surface. Sling a good electric motor underneath and connect it all up with a simple rubber drive belt. There’s your turntable. For the tonearm, we need a cast alloy tube integrating head and arm, pivoting on ball bearings. Attach your favorite cartridge, and away you go.

Plinth Charming

It may seem very straightforward, but that’s the beauty of the beast. Don’t be fooled, though:  despite its lack of massive over-engineering, delicate suspension, space age materials, and enormous price-tag, the P5 remains a masterpiece of effective design.

Situated between the P3 (lower-spec tonearm and plinth) and the P7 (ceramic-oxide platter), the P5’s main chassis is MDF, surrounded by aluminium extrusions, damped at their corners by rubber gaskets. A 12mm plate glass platter, seated on a nylon sub-platter, is topped with a felt mat. To change rotation speed for LP and 45s the patter has to be removed and the rubber drive belt shifted onto the smaller or larger diameter pulley on the motor shaft. The motor itself is a DC unit electronically regulated in order to negate vibration, so the motor can be attached directly to the underside of the plinth and all the fuss associated with a suspended sub-assembly.

Disarming tonearm

The RB700 tonearm carries on in the tradition of its famous forebears, the RB250 and RB300. Made of aluminium and stainless steel, internally wired with high quality cable from Germany, and reassuringly tight in construction. It is fully equipped with anti-skate bias setting, tracking weight adjustment, and a hydraulically-damped arm-lift and lower mechanism.

It lacks one facility, namely vertical tracking angle tuning. That is, the arm is not fitted with a mechanism to raise or lower the height of the arm to precisely set the vertical tracking angle (VTA) of the cantilever on which the needle is fixed. Nine out of ten users will not miss this, but hard-core turntablers know VTA can make a big difference to sound quality. Spacers can be acquired from Rega to sit under the arm, but this is not especially convenient, nor does it allow full adjustability. Easier is to stick to already optimised Rega cartridges like the Super Elys fitted to the review sample (a moving magnet design, not included in the price).

However, there are a lot of non-Rega cartridges that work a treat on Rega arms – when properly adjusted – so an aftermarket VTA kit would be a worthwhile investment for those intent on getting the very best from their Goldring, Sumiko, Grado, Shure etc.

Co-operative operative

Set-up is dead easy. Set the turntable on a shelf offering reasonable isolation from household vibrations, fit the drive belt, and lower the platter and mat onto the sub-platter. The P5 comes with captive, but well-made output leads, so these need only be plugged into your pre-amp, and no separate earth lead is necessary. Easy as all that is, the ensuing painstaking adjustments needed to properly mount your cartridge in the arm-head are unavoidable.

Lowering the needle into the groove, I sat back waiting to learn something new about my favorite recordings. My first impression was of a nice low noise floor, and as the music played I noted no obvious anomalies in rotation speed. Moving around the room, it was also clear that footfall doesn’t unduly bother the P5, but here your choice of support for the turntable will play an important part. For functionality the P5 is hard to beat.

Running through my precious XTC collection, it was clear the turntable yields a very neutral and transparent sound, tonally true, and with strong image stability. Importantly, the music retained its rhythmic integrity, and sense of unity – it’s here that the arm and turntable can be heard to be performing well. The typical vinyl virtues of a tangible and ‘organic’ sound were all present and correct. Bass ran deep and was well defined, with no sign of unevenness, and the mids and highs were free from any colouration that might stem from tonearm-related resonances.

Where I found something to criticize it was very likely to be a product of the Super Elys cartridge. Sound-staging was not hugely expansive, being somewhat compressed between the speakers. Although everything happened on time there was also a slight lack of dynamic response. Maybe the cartridge was a little ‘stiff’ and a few more running hours would help out in this regard. Detail retrieval was fine, but I know my usual Goldring cartridge can be bettered in this dimension, and the Super Elys was only its equal.

Nevertheless, I found myself liking the Rega P5 for its simplicity and for its genuine sonic virtues. It’s a product that will rise to the challenge of upgrades in support, pre- and power amplification, and cartridge. It’s a worthy successor to its illustrious forebears, and for the money it’s probably all the turntable you’ll ever need. 

For your nearest Rega dealer