Brinkmann Bardo (Hi-Fi+ 85)

There’s an interesting piece on the Brinkmann website which tells us a lot about the way Helmut Brinkmann’s mind works. In essence it explains how Helmut noticed that the tiny screws that adjust the cantilever on the EMT cartridge were made of steel and realising that this was probably not a good idea he set about trying screws of different materials and in different arrangements to find the best sounding arrangement. These screws are 1mm in diameter, the man’s attention to detail is clearly in another league to that normally encountered even in German engineering. After considerable experimentation he came to the conclusion that having one of the three screws in titanium produced the highest fidelity. I’m impressed that he made the time to listen, clearly German TV is no better than the programming we get over here!

The Bardo is Brinkmann’s second direct or magnetic drive turntable. It was preceded by the Oasis (which looks like the same design on a plinth) and has the same rather elegant drive system. The motor and the bearing are one piece, that is they are combined because they both need to be in the same place. This is obviously not new, Technics and many other Japanese manufacturers did something similar over thirty years ago but I can think of only one other example with audiophile aspirations. That example is the Goldmund Studio which is no longer produced but had a pretty strong reputation even in the context of that company’s exalted range.

While the idea of putting the motor around the bearing would seem to be a logical thing to do in practice it’s not without difficulties. The main one is that electric motors ‘cog’, that is their rotation isn’t totally fluid but consists of a series of small jumps as the rotor is pushed from one coil to the next. Brinkmann has sought to combat this by placing the coils at 22.5 degrees to one another and having overlapping magnetic fields, this was found to reduce cogging and make for higher sound quality compared to a traditional 90 degree layout. The Bardo also has somewhat more substantial platter than direct drives of yore, it weighs 22lbs (10kg) and the inertia that this provides further helps to smooth out any remaining cogging.

Interestingly the speed control system uses analogue electronics where a digital system would undoubtedly have been cheaper, but as you will have surmised Brinkmann is not about making things at minimum cost. The speed control is done with a strobe or tachometer under the magnet in the bearing/sub-platter, its voltage output is compared with a temperature stabilised reference voltage and feedback is used to align the two. A digital system would be simpler but its RF emissions were considered to be a hazard to sound quality.

The bearing is a steel shaft that sits on a Teflon cup but the rest of the motor and subplatter is machined from aluminium, it’s an elegant assembly and I hope that there is space to publish a picture.

The parts of the turntable that you can readily see are finished to a superb standard in anodised aluminium, it’s a simple single beam construction with three adjustable feet and a single arm mounting. The latter is large enough to accept arms from nine to 12inches in length and Brinkmann makes two tonearms the 12.1 and the 10.5, the name indicating size. Both are based on the classic Breuer design and have gimbal bearings for both axis. The counterweight is a split type that can cope with a wide range of cartridges but the effective mass of 12g would appear to suit moving coils. As mentioned the company doesn’t make its own cartridges but has a variant of the EMT which it calls Ti presumably in honour of that tiny bolt. It also has a resonance optimised contact patch or mounting made with a sandwich of materials. It has a Van den Hul stylus and various other modifications as well as a medium to low compliance suspension.

The Bardo sample sent for review had a pair of XLR sockets on the plinth beneath the arm but you can order this turntable with RCA phono sockets or use a DIN plug straight into the arm itself. Inconveniently the XLR outputs are not channel marked so you need a familiar record to establish this particular fundamental. Even though few phono stages take advantage of the fact the phono cartridge is naturally a balanced output transducer, so XLR sockets make a lot of sense. Fortunately I was able to use a another German component to assess its potential in this respect, namely a Burmester 100 phono stage which has the requisite sockets and is a very fine piece in its own right.