Up to 84% in savings when you subscribe to The Absolute Sound
Logo Close Icon

Begin typing your search above and press return to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

(Words: Chris Martens; Images: Alan Sircom)

Directly after the Munich High-End show, Hi-Fi+ Editor Alan Sircom and I had an opportunity to visit the Rega Research factory on the outskirts of Southend-on-Sea, in Essex, UK. During our visit, we had the opportunity to see how Rega products are developed and manufactured, but more importantly we had the opportunity to talk with a number of Rega staff members—and in particular with company founder Roy Gandy—to learn what really makes the company “tick.”

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Some background information will prove helpful. 2013 will mark Rega’s 40th anniversary and over those forty years the firm has grown to become a world-renowned producer of turntables, tonearms, phono cartridges, amplifiers, digital audio components, and loudspeakers—all of them made almost entirely by hand in the Southend factory.  Where many audio firms have moved product off shore, Rega has deliberately taken the opposite tack. In short, at Rega the term “made in the U.K.” means precisely what it says—as in “our products are built, in their entirety and right down to the smallest bolt, screw, and lock-washer, in England.” This distinction forms a hugely significant part of Rega’s corporate identity.

 

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

We began our tour in Rega’s engineering department, where we learned that the team works in a focused but not overly formal or regimented environment. Instead, collaboration is the watchword for the entire team. Thus, one individual might be given personal responsibility for a specific project (e.g., developing the power supply/speed control module for Rega’s upcoming RP10 turntable), but is also given the freedom to draw in additional team resources as needed. Most members of the engineering team have a significant degree of cross training in one another’s areas of expertise, so that if development problems arise, it is easy to convene brief team meetings to seek out solutions. More so than in many companies, Rega engineers appear to be ready, willing, and able to share their talents when requested, to achieve better overall product outcomes. The team’s commitment to collaboration is palpable.

 

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

This sense of collaboration also extends to Rega’s sales and distribution efforts, so that on one wall of the engineering area there is a world map surrounded with photographs of each of Rega’s international distributors. Roy Gandy said the point of the map and photos was to remind staff members that distributors “were members of the extended Rega family” and were, in a real sense, the company’s “life blood.” To better serve its distributors and to make just-in-time product shipments possible, Rega attempts to hold on hand a reasonable quantity of finished stock.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

 


Even so, certain new products (e.g., a new analogue package consisting of Rega’s RP8 turntable bundled with the Apheta moving coil phono cartridge) have proven so popular that it has been difficult at times for the factory to keep up with demand. Indeed, as Roy took us on our tour, he showed us a work area where sets of almost-ready-to-ship RP8s were awaiting a handful of late-arriving critical parts so that they could be completed and sent out to waiting customers. To give you some idea of just how busy the factory is, note that Rega builds and ships four-figure quantities of its entry-level RP1 turntables each month and does brisk sales of its higher-priced models as well.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Three things that impressed us throughout out tour were the very high levels of careful hand assembly that go into most every Rega product, the extreme levels of craftsmanship and quality control work done during each phase of assembly, and the extent to which many factory workers make a point of cross training so that they can fill multiple roles in assembling various products. Whether visiting Rega’s tonearm assembly area, phono cartridge assembly room, loudspeaker construction area, or the workspace where Rega’s top-tier Reference Series components are built, it is common to find workers who know chapter and verse of all—or nearly all—of the assembly steps and techniques involved. For the past several years, I have used Rega’s Isis CD player/DAC and Osiris integrated amplifier as reference components in my home system, so for me it was exciting to meet the woman who, in all likelihood, personally built and tested the components I use so often in my work. This is, then, no run-of-the-mill factory where workers drone away at the same tasks, day in and day out. Instead, Rega workers show an unusual degree of initiative and awareness of how individual assembly steps relate to the larger whole.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

 

We spent a great deal of time learning how Rega’s famous tonearms are made. One of the key steps involves fitting precision-made ball bearings to a stainless steel axle shaft, and then pre-tensioning those bearings for a minimum of play. Interestingly, bearing assemblies for Rega’s RB303, RB808, and RB1010 arms are all built in the same assembly are and use parts that, on paper, have all passed the same demanding QC tests. The difference, which is virtually impossible to measure but is easy to discern by feel, is that certain bearing sets have fractionally tighter tolerances than others, even though all of them have passed the same incoming inspection tests. Thus, when a worker encounters a set of these best-of-the-best bearings, they are set aside and reserved for use in Rega’s top-tier arms. To give you some idea of the ultra-tight tolerances we are talking about, note that standard RB303 bearings have about 4 microns of clearance before pre-tensioning and just 1 micron of clearance after pre-tensioning. By using the personal touch, the bearing sets used in the RB808 and RB1010-series arms are claimed to be able to achieve remarkable sub-1-micron tolerances after pre-tensioning.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

 

Once horizontal-axis tonearm bearing assemblies are complete, further arm-building steps including preparation of vertical-axis bearings, installation of signal cables, final assembly, and final fine-tuning of arm azimuth alignment (to ensure that head shells will be perfectly level vis-à-vis the turntable platter). Then, finished arms are run through a test station where arm friction levels and other functions are verified. Only after that final, strict test are arms ready either for sale as standalone products or for fitting on appropriate Rega turntables

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

 

Not to be outdone by their counterparts in the tonearm assembly area, Rega’s cartridge assembly team is a close-knit group charged with doing some of the most delicate assembly work used in any of Rega’s products. Of particular interest was the process through which a highly skilled worker (who evidently has hands like a surgeon’s) winds coil wires on the cross-shaped former used in the Rega Apheta moving coil cartridge’s motor assembly. The wires used are thinner (actually, much thinner) than human hairs, so they must be handled with the utmost care. It was also revealing to see how that, at each cartridge assembly station, there are special viewing scopes that allow workers to check the alignment of styli, cantilevers, suspension systems, and other cartridge motor components. Many companies would not bother with the rigours of cartridge manufacturing, but that is simply not the Rega way. Thus Rega builds all but its least expensive phono cartridges—including the RB78, Bias 2, Elys 2, Exact, and Apheta—in house; the low-cost Carbon cartridge is outsourced to a third party manufacturer who builds the moving magnet design to Rega’s specifications.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

 

As we toured the facility, we came upon the loudspeaker assembly area and once again saw evidence of Rega’s hands-on care in assembly and commitment to high quality materials. In accompanying photos, we show images of a typical Rega crossover network, which not only shows the beefy inductors and other high quality circuit components used, but also shows the exceptionally high-quality signal wires used—even though this is an area when many manufacturers might be tempted to “cut corners.” Roy Gandy also showed us an eight-layer driver voice coil much more robust than typical driver voice coils we have seen used in comparably price competing speakers. Throughout our tour, it became obvious that Rega consistently pays attention to small construction details even in areas customers might not know about. With apologies to film director Spike Lee, a certain “Do the Right Thing” mentality plainly permeates the entire Rega operation.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

 

Finally, we had a chance to visit Rega’s incoming inspection area and to see some of the exhaustive check-and-verify steps used to qualify incoming parts. This is not mere checking, but an active part of the design, development and production engineering process; during the inspection for platter main bearing assemblies for RP3 turntables for example, we learned that through a process of ongoing improvement, already very good bearing specifications had been upgraded further still (making good things better is very much part of the Rega ethos).

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Roy Gandy pointed out that not all circuit board assemblies are completed in-house, but Rega not only specifies but also supplies both bare printed circuit boards and the individual components to be installed on those boards. Thus, Rega ships pre-qualified parts kits to its chosen British assembly houses, secure in the knowledge that the right parts, and more importantly known-good parts, will be used in every single circuit board.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

A tour through the Rega customer service workbench also proved illuminating in that the bench was practically empty and the backlog of products awaiting repair was impressively small. Granted, part of this is down to a network of worldwide distributors who have good repair facilities of their own. But, that virtually empty repair bench also served as a silent testimonial to the fact that Rega products are extremely well built, sturdy, and reliable. Moreover, Gandy and his repair technicians asserted that the company has the ability, should the need ever arise, to repair virtually any Rega product built since the company’s inception.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

 

Following closely upon the heels of Rega’s recently released RP6 and RP8 turntables will be the new RP10 model, which should soon take its place as the flagship model in the RP-series range. If you are wondering from whence the design philosophies for Rega’s new-generation RP ‘tables have come, then scan ahead for a look at Rega’s radical, minimalist Naiad turntable, which is discussed below.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Last but not least, one of the highlights of our visit was having the chance to visit Roy Gandy’s home and to see and hear Rega’s ultra-advanced Naiad turntable in action. The Naiad, Roy explained, was developed at great expense as a test-bed through which Rega was able to validate each of the theoretical design concepts underlying Rega’s overall approach to turntable design. And sure enough, you can see a lot of the Naiad’s influences in Rega’s recent RP-series turntables.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

 

Lighting the path for future designs to come, the Naiad uses an ultra light, but also ultra stiff frame made of a carbon fibre core sandwiched between two aerospace-grade ceramic stiffening plates. It also uses a remarkable zirconium oxide main bearing assembly, which costs more to procure than the entire build cost or Rega’s upcoming RP10 turntable. Indeed, the processes used in fabrication of this bearing are so elaborate and painstaking that, at best, the manufacturer must limit output to fewer than 50 assemblies per year. In turn, the Naiad uses a sophisticated, ceramic platter (similar in concept to the platter that will be used in the upcoming P10 turntable, but built with a concave underside surface and to extremely high tolerance limits). Finally, the ‘table features the tightest specification tonearm Rega has ever produced—one whose bearing clearance tolerance are extraordinarily tight.

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

How does the Naiad sound? Well, that’s a discussion for a different day, but suffice it to say that the Naiad we heard sounded very promising indeed (offering everything you may have liked in past Rega turntable design, but pushed to levels you might not have imagined possible).  Will the Naiad ever become a product you might buy? That question is not fully resolved yet, but we suspect that it will be. But know this: if put into production the Naiad will be an extremely exclusive product that will—as a matter of practical necessity—carry a correspondingly steep price tag.

__________

Sidebar: Analogue Audio Questions for Roy Gandy

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Hi-Fi+: What is your take on unipivot tonearm designs?

RG: We see that unipivot designs can have validity for certain lower-cost applications, although we do think they have certain technical limitations. For higher performance applications, however, we believe that properly executed gimbal-bearing-type arms can ultimately achieve tighter bearing clearances while providing a more stable playback platform.

Hi-Fi+: What is your view of air-bearing-equipped turntables and tonearms?

RG: We have misgivings about them—misgivings borne out of out belief that musical information lost through loose bearing clearances can never be replaced. Understand, please, that our best tonearms have bearing clearance tolerances of less than 1 micron—tolerances we do not think any present air bearing can hope to match. If you buy the notion that tight bearings are essential to proper information retrieval, then we don’t see the value of going to an inherently looser bearing system.

Hi-Fi+: Why don’t Rega tonearms offer provisions for VTA/SRA adjustment?

RG: Basically, knowing what we do about tolerances for stylus positioning within cartridge cantilevers, we do not really accept that the concept of VTA adjustment is valid or beneficial. Consider this: to the best of our knowledge, even the best cartridge makers are only able to achieve stylus positioning accurate to within about a 2 degree tolerance window—but not better than that. Now ask yourself why it is desirable to trim stylus positioning by fractions of a degree, when the stylus’ starting position might fall (and in practice does fall) literally anywhere within a two-degree window. We aren’t saying you won’t hear sonic changes when you attempt VTA adjustments, but we think those changes could just as well be due to minute changes in tracking force, or even to the tightness of set screws, etc. used in VTA adjustment mechanisms. This same line of thought, by the way, is also why we do not see the need for radial tracking tonearms.
__________

Meet Your Maker: Hi-Fi+ Visits Rega Research

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Gandy’s views on these subjects, there is no denying that his is a unique and obviously thoughtfully reasoned approach to the subject of analogue playback. 

Tags: FEATURED REGA

Read Next From Blog

See all

Adblocker Detected

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."