#ORBIT TURNTABLE PLUS#

The material uses glass fibers to reinforce the plastic, making it substantially stronger. Designer Hertig explained: “Many of our components use a ‘glass-filled’ polymer. U-Turn also uses a special polymer for the headshell, tonearm support, bearing, and bearing housing. The Orbit Special also offers as standard kit a cueing lever (a $40 option for the Orbit Plus) that makes possible precise positioning of the arm over a desired place in the groove, and gentle lowering and raising of the stylus. The new gimbal design produces less friction, which lets the stylus move more freely as it traces a record’s groove, which in turn translates into less distortion and better imaging.

The new OA2 arm has a gimbaled pivot: the new bearing’s vertical axis comprises two stainless-steel conical pivots that rotate on hardened-steel ball bearings, its horizontal axis high-quality radial ball bearings mounted on a shaft of machined aluminum. That U-Turn has learned a thing or two about designing tonearms since 2013 is evident in this improved version of the original Orbit arm, a unipivot design suspended with an inverted pyramid of ball bearings. It shares its acrylic platter with the Orbit Plus, as well as the thin, round drive belt that drove me to distraction with that model-and did again with this one (see below). It comes with Ortofon’s well-known 2M Red moving-magnet cartridge rather than the Orbit Plus’s Ortofon OM5E MM. First, its plinth is made not of MDF but of solid hardwood: flatcut maple or rift walnut. It looks very similar to the Orbit and Orbit Plus, but there are some major differences. U-Turn’s latest turntable-and-tonearm package, the Orbit Special, is available without ($459) or with ($529) a built-in phono preamplifier.

U-Turn is still in Woburn, now in a new and larger facility, and they employ almost 30 people-a 21st-century audio success story. They raised almost four times that, and shipped their first units in September 2013. As Carter told me in 2014, engineer Hertig designed the original Orbit turntable and tonearm-hardly a task for the faint-hearted-and the three funded the project via Kickstarter, setting a goal of $60,000. They thought the turntables they could afford weren’t very good, and the good ones were beyond their budget. U-Turn is the brainchild of three high school friends: Ben Carter, Bob Hertig, and Peter Maltzan. I was very impressed by that turntable, one of the first efforts of a young, crowdfunded company based in Woburn, Massachusetts, near Boston.

#ORBIT TURNTABLE PLUS#

In 2014, when the vinyl revival had already gained a lot of traction, I reviewed U-Turn Audio’s Orbit Plus turntable (then $299, now an even better deal at $289 all prices USD).