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February 2010
What It's All About
Editorial By David Price
It’s at times like this that you have to stop, take stock and try to remember just what it’s all about. When experiencing the £15,000 Klimo Tafelrunde turntable [reviewed on p10], that is...
Here we have a vast, sculptural apparition, the size of an industrial-sized coffee table, with various exotic protrusions, all elaborately surfaced. It’s visually arresting enough to divert all eyes in the room to its delightful form. It presents itself, if I may borrow a phrase from the BBC2 cultural commentators, as kinetic art. It moves apparently to perform a function, yet surely its primary function is simply to be its beautiful self?
Well okay, it’s really just a fancy record player. But using this exquisite bit of kit makes you reassess what hi-fi should be in the first place. It’s very, errrm, Italian, don’t you know? By which I mean lavishly designed, seductively shaped and utterly appealing to one’s ‘hi-fi heartstrings’. Yet there are some annoying imperfections you wouldn’t see on a £300 Rega. For example, the cueing lever doesn’t work right, so one is forced to hand cue (not a problem for Noel and I as that’s what we prefer anyway). And some of that chromium plating is really rather poor; one wonders if it will fade like an old Lancia Beta in a Scottish winter?
Yet despite its obvious imperfections, the sound it serves up is as show-stopping as the aura it radiates out into the room. If you were to own one, it’s the sort of thing your friends and family would remember you by, when you were gone, like Uncle Rupert and his orange Maserati Khamsin. People would talk about the time they came to your house to see your Klimo, and how they’d never heard anything like it before or after. The Tafelrunde is, in every sense, a seminal hi-fi product. Showy, sassy, sexy and faintly silly, owning one would surely become a vocation.
It is products such as these - glorious flaws and all - that remind us that hi-fi is more than a functional, utilitarian pursuit; it’s a passion with great rewards awaiting the dedicated. And the good news is that, should you not have fifteen grand under your mattress, there are some equally special products - old and new - for a fraction of this. Hi-Fi World is as ever, your faithful guide. Enjoy!
David Price, editor
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