Bergmann Sindre Straightline Tracking Arm and Turntable (TAS 206)

The Danish designer and manufacturer Johnnie Bergmann named his Sindre, a new straight line tracking integrated turntable, after Sindri, a dwarf in Norse mythology who forged Odin’s golden ring and Thor’s hammer. While forging and hammering are pretty far removed even as metaphors from the tasks of playing a record, this would hardly be the first time in the history of audio that a product’s name is at once allusive and elusive, and Scandinavians do seem to love actually naming their products as opposed to assigning mere model numbers (have a look at the Ortofon catalog or stroll through any IKEA). Bergmann clearly intends to invoke a spirit of workmanship worthy of the gods, which could also be construed as adding hubris to obscurity. Fortunately, there is nothing dwarfish about the Sindre’s performance, and its craftsmanship is certainly of a high order indeed. In the remarks that follow I will be making some criticisms of aspects of the design, but I should like it understood from the outset that the Sindre is one of the finest turntables I have ever used and that I enjoyed every minute of the time I had it in house.

As every reader must know, pivoted tonearms are intrinsically compromised because they inscribe an arc across the record, whereas a record master is cut radially, that is, the front to back axis of the cutting stylus is held at a right angle to the groove as it tracks along a radius. Assuming correct arm geometry and pickup alignment with respect to offset and overhang (according to formulas developed in the 1940s and before), lateral tracking error (LTE) of pivoted arms can be reduced but reach zero at only two points, everywhere else a deviation from tangency with consequent penalties in distortion. In practice the significance of LTE appears to be rather small when arms and pickups are properly set up, its audible consequences even smaller (e.g., the loudest distortion products tend to be of the relatively benign second order harmonic variety). But high end audio is nothing if not perfectionist, for which reason straightline tracking—henceforth SLT¹—arms have long been something of a holy grail among designers and audiophiles.

In the late seventies and early eighties I went through a period where I tried out several SLT integrated turntables (these did not include the Goldmund, way beyond what I could afford) and found them all lacking in one way or another when compared to my preferred setups (Thorens/SME, Linn, later various SOTAs with The Arm or SMEs). The SLTs’ putative tracking advantages were more than offset by any number of problems in the arms and/or their associated tables (see sidebar). Owing to these experiences, I was too discouraged to try some highly regarded separate SLT arms, notably the Eminent Technology, the forerunner to all subsequent airbearing SLTs, including the Sindre’s. So when Robert Harley proposed this assignment, interest and anxiety were piqued in about equal measure.

Description and Setup

Priced at $21,000, the Sindre comes as three boxes: the integrated turntable, an outboard controller/power supply for the motor, and an outboard air pump for the airbearings. With its clean lines and black/silver/white color palette, the main unit is appropriately Danish in its elegant simplicity, but this simplicity belies a good bit of sophistication in thinking and engineering. The nucleus of the design consists in the use of airbearings for both the arm and platter assemblies. In an arrangement reminiscent of the Air Tangent, Bergmann uses a fixed open pipe with tiny vents along the top. The back of the arm tube is attached to a light, rigid, short sleeve that fits around the air pipe and allows the arm to glide as if friction free. As dust and grit can easily cause an airbearing to hang up, the pump is outfitted with a filter (easily replaceable should the need arise).

The arm is mounted at the factory; its base, counterweight, and bearing assembly are made from a hardened aluminum alloy, the tube from carbon fiber. Setup is straightforward and easy (despite a manual that, as translated from Danish, is as risible as anything I’ve read from the Far East). Vertical tracking force is static, set by a counterweight, so a gauge (not supplied) is needed. Vertical tracking angle is set by loosening a screw on the arm base and raising or lowering the column as required. For accurate pickup positioning, the Sindre comes with an easy to use aluminum jig that fits over the spindle; on the jig is a radial line from the spindle to a second line that intersects it at 90° near the outer edge of the platter. Simply position the pickup so that the stylus cues down at the crosshairs (the shank aligned with the intersecting line), then check it again at any other point along the radius. Once the stylus cues down on the radius at any two separate points, you’ve finished this adjustment. In place of a headshell in the ordinary sense of the word, an aluminum headpiece terminates into a narrow head beam with a half moon cross-section. Over this fits a crossbeam to which the pickup is fitted. The crossbeam is not otherwise attached to the headpiece until the pickup is installed and tightened down, whereupon they form in effect a clamp around the head beam.