The sweet spot for home turntable enthusiasts on a budget seems to be the $200 mark. This might be the best of the bunch.
One can only imagine the sake-fueled club hopping that led to the development of the Seiko Frequency drum machine watch.
Hell Freezes Over: iPod Stuff
By James Grahame
Hell has well and truly frozen over. Retro Thing joins zillions of other sites in a chorus of iPod adoration. Sort of. This rather snazzy looking setup is the Concertino iPod tube amp, complete with a couple of speakers and a few feet of speaker wire. The price is equally snazzy: a shade over $4,100 (including shipping).
The German-made Concertino weighs in at 22 lbs, plus about 13.5 lbs for the speakers. Sound is processed through a four tube system before being pumped out of the speakers in all its analog tube-warmed glory. Concertino includes a second audio input so you can attach a CD player or turntable, although at this price we'd expect a plethora of inputs and add-ons (plus in-home installation by a German technician in a white lab coat).
If your pocket book doesn't quite stretch far enough for one of these, the teeny-tiny Z.Vex iMPAMP ($525) or nOrh SE-9 ($450) should fill in nicely, ThankYouVeryMuch.
Concertino iPod tube amplifier (Goldster Audio)
