Fern & Roby are an American company that specialise in attention to detail and designing beautiful furniture from high grade materials.
Although it’s not currently available in the UK, we thought it worth a mention on it’s looks alone.
At $6500, it’s not cheap, but then it doesn’t exactly look lightweight either.
Made from Cast Iron, Bronze and Heart Pine, this thing is beautiful to behold – yet it’s also packed full of clever features.
The huge weight of the platter should require a substantial (and noisy) motor, but Fern & Roby have engineered their way around the problem:
‘By synthesizing the sinusoidal drive waveforms required to turn the motor, the Fern & Roby system is not limited to a fixed motor speed or fixed drive power. This allows for a design with extravagant platter mass coupled to a modestly sized motor. From a standstill, the platter is accelerated gradually to the desired speed in order to stay below the motor’s stall torque. The platter’s speed is determined 48 times per revolution with a precision-cut optical interrupter wheel mounted on its underside.
Once at the target speed, the motor’s drive power is reduced to the bare minimum that is required to overcome bearing friction and stylus drag. Reduced motor drive power reduces noise and vibration. Tiny adjustments are made infrequently to the drive speed as needed to maintain exact platter speed. These dynamic drive speed adjustments are limited to 0.003% and only happen one time per revolution of the platter. This delicate approach to speed control minimizes “wow” distortion.’
