Walker Proscenium Black Diamond Mk II Record Player (TAS 202)

For almost ten years, every time I’ve listened to LPs I’ve listened through some version of the Walker Proscenium belt-driven record player with integral air-bearing, straight-line-tracking arm, air-bearing platter, and air-suspension feet. No matter what else has changed in my stereo (and everything else has changed in my stereo), it has remained a constant reference, for one simple reason: It has always sounded just that much more like the real thing than any other analog front end I’ve compared it to (and I’ve compared it to some very fine ’tables and arms). I’ve reviewed previous versions of this classic twice (last time in Issue 167). Now, Walker Audio has released a new iteration, the Proscenium Black Diamond Mk II, that is its best effort yet. (Owners of older Walkers can easily upgrade.)

There are good reasons for the Walker’s persistent superiority as an analog front end. First, in a segment of the high end where “well made” is taken for granted, it is extremely well made of durable, painstakingly tested, often cryogenically treated, ultra-high-quality parts that don’t or have yet to fail. (There is an exception to this that I will discuss below, but the problems I’ve had with it are my doing, not the Walker’s.) Once it is set up—and setup by its designers, Lloyd Walker and Fred Law, is included in the purchase price—every standard adjustment from VTA to VTF to azimuth to viscous damping of the arm (straight-line-trackers do not need anti-skating compensation) is simple to make or unmake in precisely repeatable increments. For instance, if you’re into tweaking VTA for each and every LP, which I am not, the Walker makes the procedure a snap. Just loosen a setscrew on the tonearm pillar via the supplied Allen wrench (a toolkit, complete with everything from precision electronic VTF meter to cartridge-alignment tool to rotational-speed-setting strobe and test record to spare belts and assorted other tools and parts, comes with every Walker); turn two knurled knobs on the pillar up or down, depending on whether you want to lower or raise the rear end of the tonearm (there are markers on the knobs which allows you to return to your starting point); re-tighten the set screw; and that’s it. Setting VTF is even simpler. Most non-engineering types, including me, are intimidated by elaborate devices such as the Walker and shy away from making adjustments, lest they screw something up irreparably. Short of tearing off the tonearm or dropping the ’table from a height, you literally can’t screw something up irreparably on this record player. You don’t have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind you because you’ll never get lost in the woods; there is always an easy way back to wherever you started.

But the Walker’s excellence isn’t just a matter of the precision, durability, intuitive simplicity of use, and repeatability of settings of all of its adjustable parts. This is also a record player that exemplifies a certain take on the reproduction of music via LPs—what might be called the “transparency-to-the-mastering-lathe” approach.

Though there is a great deal to be said for pivoted arms—and I myself am a huge fan of several, particularly the twelve-inch Da Vinci Grandezza—one thing that can’t be said for them is that they track the undulations inscribed in the grooves of records in the same way those undulations were originally cut into those grooves. As I’m sure most of you already know, the stylus (or chisel) of the cutting head on an LP mastering lathe moves across a lacquer blank in a straight line, traveling from the outer perimeter to the run-out grooves along a radius rather than in an arc. Assuming arm and cartridge are properly aligned, when an LP is played back via a straight-line-tracker like the Walker Black Diamond, your stylus is traversing the exact same radius that the stylus of the cutting head traversed when it cut the record. Your cartridge is never at a slightly offset angle to that ideal radius, as it necessarily is with a pivoted arm (save for the two points in its arc where the stylus transects that radius). What this means in practice is that straight-line-trackers eliminate the tracking and skating distortions, and consequent uneven stylus and groove wear, of pivoted arms.

If tracking a record in a straight line were all there were to it, all record players would track in straight lines. But, of course, that isn’t all there is to it. To explain the problems, I’m going to borrow (well, steal) a point from a well-written article on tonearm design that Geoff Husband penned for the Web-zine TNT-Audio some years ago. (Go to http://www.tnt-audio.com/int.html to read the entire piece.)