Winding my way through Gideon Schwartz’s fascinating, comprehensive, and beautifully designed book Revolution: The History of Turntable Design [Phaidon], I paused to marvel. First, at how such crude early transcription devices from the late-1800s gave birth to the extraordinarily sophisticated, highly engineered record players of today. Second, at the kind of minor miracle we rarely think about but that nonetheless occurs every time we lower a stylus into a vinyl groove. I mean, not only that it functions at all but also that LPs reproduced via fine turntables remain (for many of us) the most musically satisfying way to reproduce music in the home. It truly is a wonderment.
A follow-up to Schwartz’s 2019 book, Hi-Fi: The History of High-End Audio Design, Revolution is something of a must-have for vinyl geeks. The photos are gorgeous, the history enlightening, and the capsule entries on various manufacturers past and present reminders of the people and companies that have pushed the limits of what’s possible in turntable, tonearm, and cartridge engineering.
On page 200 I happened upon Schwartz’s entry for Basis Audio and its founder Armando “A.J.” Conti, surely one of the most brilliant minds ever to tackle the issues of vinyl playback. Schwartz correctly describes Conti’s as a “zealous commitment to analog design and application.”
Although he held a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Conti didn’t set out to work in the high-end audio field. You could instead say it chose him due to one of life’s “happy accidents.”
As A.J. told the story, while playing some records at a family gathering in 1984, one of his guests walked across the room, causing his Linn LP 12 (famously sensitive to footfall) to jump. The resulting blown woofer in one of Conti’s Snell Type A loudspeakers propelled him to make a suspension system for his Linn and then a platter, until he eventually decided to design an entire turntable from scratch.
With a good job in aerospace at the Teledyne Corporation, Conti had no interest in becoming a turntable manufacturer. At least not at the outset.
But being an audio enthusiast, A.J. decided to open a sideline retail venture out of his house. As he told Robert Harley in a 2007 interview in these pages: “I made the prototype and was only expecting that it would never skip from someone walking in the room, and perhaps that I’d maybe hear a small difference in the bottom end. That was all I was expecting. When I cued the first record—Thelma Houston’s I’ve Got the Music in Me—I was absolutely shocked. Her voice was so effortless and out of the speakers.”
As things turned out, a lot of those who heard A.J.’s prototype wanted one for themselves. Word made its way to Krell founder Dan D’Agostino, who, likewise impressed, invited A.J. to exhibit his ’table in the Krell room at CES.
“I showed the prototype and walked away with 50 orders. It was crazy,” Conti recalled in that interview.
Within a year of founding Basis—the original model was dubbed the Debut—A.J. quit his day job to become a full-time turntable manufacturer.
He went on to establish himself and Basis as top players in the world of contemporary turntable design. Basis ’tables and ’arms are revered for their exceptional ability to get out of the way and reveal new insights into their owners’ record collections. The word “revelation” is frequently used to describe people’s first (and ongoing) encounters with Basis designs. Moreover, though initial setup can be time consuming, once you’re there—and Conti recorded many instructional videos demonstrating the process—Basis turntables and tonearms are essentially set-it-and-forget-it devices. They are remarkably stable over years, even decades.
But because life truly isn’t fair, Conti, as longtime readers know, passed from a heart attack in 2016 at the all-too young age of 59.
(Much has been written in these pages about A.J’s life and work, but I would specifically point to Robert Harley’s review of the 2800 turntable in Issue 172 and its accompanying interview with Conti [referenced above], Paul Seydor’s review of the model 2200 [Issue 180], and most recently Robert’s review of A.J.’s posthumously released masterpiece, the Transcendence turntable, and SuperArm 12.5 in Issue 295. All can be accessed via either TAS’ or Basis’ websites.)
Moving Forward
What happens to a company and its legacy when the guy who made it all possible is gone?
In my Further Thoughts review of the Basis 2200/Vector 4 [Issue 317, July/August 2021], A.J.’s widow Jolanta and I discussed the steep challenges she faced after A.J.’s death. I’ll quote here from that article to put the subject of this review in context.
Jolanta Conti: “You are asking me about the challenges I faced after A.J.’s passing. Wow, where should I start!”
A stay-at-home mother with two kids, then ages 9 and 11, Jolanta was thrust into a business she admittedly knew little about, “while grieving the loss of my husband and my kids’ father, while at the same being a sole caretaker of our family, and I mean sole since my family lives in Australia.
“It is a testament to A.J. and his committed followers, both professional and personal, that Basis survived what seemed like an existential crisis with his sudden demise. A.J. was Basis, and without him many assumed the company would be gone.”
Jolanta’s immediate challenge was finding a mechanical engineer to maintain her late husband’s exacting quality standards. “I take extreme pride in our products and view my role as continuing A.J.’s legacy,” she told me. “The search took a long time, but Alex Bourque, who has been with Basis for over two years, is a gifted and extremely thorough engineer whose fanatical attention to detail would please A.J.”
Thankfully for Basis and owners of its products the company continues to thrive. The new Bravo Turntable is the first fruit of Bourque’s efforts.
Design, Bravo
Because this isn’t intended to be a lengthy treatise on all aspects of Basis’s many designs—again, the company’s website is a font of in-depth information—I’ll focus here on the 2000 series, which, as Bourque mentioned via email, is from where the Bravo derives its basic design, look, and layout.
First let me emphasize. A.J. Conti wasn’t into hocus-pocus, snake oil, magic wands, or spouting the kind of B.S. too often confused with facts. He was an exacting engineer who made decisions based on science, dogged experimentation, and not allowing himself to seek results based on preconceived notions but rather instead to determine them based on repeatable results.
The goal while designing the Bravo ($13,700 as reviewed with the Bravo Vector or $16,000 with Vector 4 arm) as the new entry-level Basis was to bring the company’s signature “lack of sound” (my phrase) to a wider audience by making it relatively more affordable, with a smaller footprint, and simpler set-up procedure. As such, it made great sense to borrow from what already works splendidly. As Bourque said, “Fortunately, there is a great history of A.J.’s designs to draw from as we considered offering a new turntable and tonearm package.”
Let’s start with acrylic, which has been a foundational material in Basis designs since the original Debut appeared nearly 40 years ago. Selected by Conti for its inherently low resonance characteristics and with no need for additional damping materials, Basis casts both the subchassis and platter from solid blocks of acrylic that are then stress-relieved for added stability to create highly non-resonant component parts. Crank up the volume on your system with no LP spinning, tap a Basis’ subchassis and platter, and what do you hear? Nada.
For the platter and bearing system, as with my personal reference Model 2200, the designs are derived from the same system A.J. developed for the Debut. The bearing is identical to that on my 2200, an exceptionally smooth and quiet oil-well design “of such high precision that the exact clearance is held to a precision of one ten-thousandth of an inch. (One ten-thousandth of an inch is 0.0001 inches, 40 times thinner than a piece of paper!)” The final machining of the acrylic platter’s location surface—aligned with the bearing via markings on each—is performed after the bearing has been assembled, which Basis says, “creates a perfectly centered support for the platter, contributing to the unwavering speed stability and the clarity of background and low-level detail.”
Motors, though not sexy and mostly unseen, are the beating hearts of any turntable. Basis’ Balanced Rotor Motor (also identical to the 2200’s) is an AC synchronous device that Basis modifies with its own magnetic assembly and places in an outboard metal housing with elastomer feet. The motor (combined with Basis’ belt, see below) has been measured to show exceptional speed stability and lack of cogging effects. As supplied with the Bravo, it can be located either behind the ’table or to the left side of the unit, which, along with the Bravo’s compact footprint (17″ x 15″), allows for greater installation flexibility.
Ever the perfectionist, A.J. found himself early on demanding greater tolerances for the belts employed to drive the platter, as he was able to measure up to three speed fluctuations per rotation due to uneven belt thicknesses. As no existing belt manufacturer was willing to meet A.J.’s specifications, he did what came naturally to him—he designed and built his own belt-grinding machine to accomplish the job in-house. Basis belts are uniform within ±0.6 microns. As RH has previously written, “for perspective, the diameter of a human hair is about 75 microns.”
For me, this story is the perfect encapsulation of A.J.’s uncompromising nature.
The Bravo’s most notable departure from the 2000 series of turntables is that it swaps out Basis’ extremely effective Resonance Annihilator suspension system for an unsuspended subchassis assembly consisting of solid feet with rubber isolators. Herein lies much of what makes the Bravo a more affordable model in the line.
As Bourque explained the decision, “the suspension systems developed at Basis result in excellent consistent performance in any setting, and so there is a concern that offering a turntable without suspension there will be some variation depending on the stand, the room, the location; but in this case the priority is to offer something smaller, less expensive, and simpler to set up. It should be much easier and appealing to someone who wants to take a mostly assembled turntable [with the feet and bearing installed] out of the box and just place the platter on the bearing and install and set up the tonearm.”
Finally, a color plate beneath the acrylic plinth adds a touch of flare to the look—customers can choose between blue, red, or black. Adds Jolanta Conti, “The blue color was inspired by A.J.’s striking Work of Art turntable, which features a blue acrylic accent.”
Design, Vector
Although it took A.J. 16 years longer to realize his vision for a tonearm design that it did his first turntable, his ideas and sketches for a state-of-the-art tonearm came first.
It was worth the wait. Originally released in January 2003, the fluid-damped Vector is a brilliant creation that again illustrates Conti’s fanatical approach to problem solving. Because Robert Harley so beautifully summarized the design in his review of the Inspiration ’table and Vector 4 [Issue 220]—and I couldn’t improve on it—I’ll quote from that piece here:
“The integral Vector 4 dual-bearing tonearm features a novel technical solution to a fundamental problem of LP playback that occurs in unipivot arms: dynamic azimuth error, or the tendency of the arm to rotate around the armtube’s axis when the stylus encounters record warp. This phenomenon causes the azimuth (the perpendicularity between the stylus and record) to constantly change from the ideal 90 degrees. The solution in the Vector 4 is to asymmetrically weight the tonearm (via a cutout in the counterweight) so that it ‘leans’ onto a second ‘stabilizer’ bearing. The main bearing is similar to a conventional unipivot and bears virtually all the arm’s weight. The secondary bearing simply stabilizes the arm to prevent the arm from ‘rolling’ in response to record warp, and also to eliminate bearing chatter.”
As those familiar with the Vector know, it is not only free of bearing chatter but also tracks superbly—another reason Basis models “disappear” so very well. No matter how dynamically challenging a record, I’ve never experienced mistracking with either my Vector 4 or the Bravo Vector reviewed here.
So what differentiates the Bravo Vector from the Vector 4?
On the surface the ’arms appear nearly identical. The most noticeable departures is that the Bravo Vector lacks the “Vector” engraving found on the 4, has a shorter fluid damping cup, and omits the Vector 4’s VTA micrometer. Note that the micrometer is not what changes VTA, though it does allow one to change it and to return to a previous setting easily and precisely. In other words, though one can change VTA on the Bravo Vector, it’s going to be a more hit-and-miss practice. Audio professionals aside, unless you’re a hobbyist who simply likes to tinker with different cartridges—in which case I recommend a multi-armed rig—you are likely to use one cartridge for many years and, once the desired VTA is found, to leave the darned thing alone.
In addition, though not visually obvious, the Bravo Vector is fitted with an aluminum countershaft, as opposed to the stainless-steel one found on the Vector 4.
Bourque told me that he finds these compromises have minimal sonic effect, and in practice and in sound I agree that the differences between the Vector 4 and the Bravo Vector aren’t of great significance. And as noted above, if one desires the micrometer, one may order a Bravo with the Vector 4 for an additional $2300.
Although I’m relatively well-versed at setting up Basis gear, which of course helps tremendously, the entire Basis Bravo Vector set-up process—from unboxing to first spin—took roughly an hour. And the great majority of that time was spent on tweaking the finer details of cartridge mounting and alignment. Unless you are entirely ham-fisted or a first timer (in which case enlist your dealer’s help), it shouldn’t take overly long to get your rig up and running.
Listening
Before getting into details of the sound, I want to emphasize how immediately evident it is that—in addition to its superb engineering and build-quality—sonically speaking, the Bravo/Vector is a Basis design through and through. Not that I would have expected anything less. But it is, nevertheless, gratifying to report that the Basis team’s carefully considered balance of compromises, while staying with the tried-and-true, clearly accomplished the company’s desire to bring the Basis “experience” to a wider audience of music lovers.
After all, the company’s stated goal is to reproduce vinyl LPs as close to the sound of mastertapes as is possible within each model’s design and cost parameters. As Bourque put it about the Bravo: “We want to stay true to the mastertapes; we want to hear the beauty of the true tone of instruments with ease and lack of distortion; and while there is some loss of detail with the Bravo/Vector package, the natural sound is preserved.”
(For this evaluation I used two moving-coil cartridges: My reference My Sonic Lab Signature Gold, as well as a Benz Micro Ruby ZL [review forthcoming]. With each, cartridge differences aside, the sound described herein was consistent.)
I started off with a beautifully recorded vocal/piano LP, Ella Fitzgerald Sings Songs from Let No Man Write My Epitaph. While the sound may not have been quite as there as it is with my 2200/Vector 4, not quite as resolved or fleshed out, it wasn’t some shadowy imitation but very much more like what I’m used to hearing than not. On “Angel Eyes,” it was marvelously pure and intimate: Ella within arm’s reach, the piano right by her side, her phrasing gorgeously rendered, and her a cappella run at the end simply gorgeous. All rendered with what Basis users know—a remarkable lack of groove or other electro-mechanically induced noise or artifacts. The use of the word “pure” a few sentences above is one to keep in mind.
Next up, the wonderful-sounding and excitingly played Mercury Dorati Firebird. (As with the Ella LP I own the Classic Records reissue.) My notes read: “Wonderfully natural. Balanced. Airy. 3-D. Warm. Wonderful soundstage continuity—really laid out both laterally and in depth—notably both large of scale as well as intimate. Great articulation. Fine dynamic layering, as well as impressively wide range. Magnificent sense of air and bloom around instruments. A sense of start and stop on a dime precision. Sweetness to the solo violin. A sense that one is really hearing what’s in the grooves.”
Reversing forces to one of audio’s stiffer challenges, a solo instrument—in this case, the Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (the sublime Philips recording by Arthur Grumiaux)—from the get-go I noted a combination of naturalness of tone as well as focus. Grumiaux’s violin centered, cushioned by expanding pockets of breath and reverberating overtones. Sonically his instrument beautifully balanced, both bright and sprightly but also whisky-toned warm. His playing exhibited the usual frisky dynamics, playful yet profound. I found the performance deeply engaging as well as moving.
Of course, transparent components reveal both the beauty and flaws in recordings.
And though I really didn’t need more Mahler symphonies on my already cramped record racks, my colleague Paul Seydor’s insightful report on Leonard Bernstein’s DG Mahler cycle in Issue 336 inspired me to take the plunge.
As Paul reported, the recordings are a mixed bag. Captured live, digitally, over a span of time with different orchestras, they range from sometimes glorious to somewhat less than that. Granted, the mature Bernstein’s readings make it all worthwhile. Hearing his insights into works we know so well—dynamic nuances, orchestral interplay, the way Mahler constructed these works as a kind of musical architect—is often revelatory. The Bravo effortlessly revealed all these things, as well as the full-on dynamic display and soundstaging these symphonies require—the Second, a personal favorite, is a perfect example (the finale, whew!)—while also showing the often-shrill, blaring brass and glassy strings that can sometimes get in the way, especially, for me, during an otherwise glorious account of the Ninth.
That’s why it’s called high fidelity.
Finally, in the mood to rock, I cued up Stevie Ray Vaughan’s gorgeous take on Hendrix’s “Little Wing” from Mo-Fi’s 45 pressing of The Sky is Crying and was struck by how intensely beautiful and immediate the recording is. The overtones of his Strat, so raw, tube-driven, and gloriously distorted. At times his playing is so quiet, even delicate, then unleashed into overdriven brilliance. And the drums, so visceral, real sounding. Breathtaking stuff.
Returning to my 2200/Vector 4 confirmed my initial impressions. Yes, stepping up brings us more—greater harmonic complexity, gravitas, dynamic pop, and emotional drama. It’s that much more like the real thing. But that does not diminish what the Bravo setup is capable of, just as stepping up from my model to an up-level Basis would reveal its relative tradeoffs without lessening what a great design it is.
When I first learned that the Bravo turntable was in the works and requested a review sample, this new model was being called the 2100. Now that I’ve heard the results of the work that Bourque and the Basis team have achieved, I couldn’t agree more with the name change.
Bravo, indeed!
Specs & Pricing
Type: Belt-drive, unsuspended turntable
Speeds: 33, 45rpm
Dimensions: 17″ x 15″ x 5.5″
Weight: 28 lbs. including Reflex Clamp and Vector tonearm
Price: $13,700 with Bravo Vector (as reviewed), $16,000 with Vector 4
BASIS AUDIO, INC.
26 Clinton Drive, Unit 116
Hollis, New Hampshire 03049
(603) 889-4776
basisaudio.com
Associated Equipment
Loudspeakers: Magnepan 1.7i
Turntable and cartridges: Basis 2200 Turntable, Basis Vector 4 arm; My Sonic Lab Signature Gold and Benz Micro Ruby ZL moving coils
Preamplifiers: Sutherland N1 and VTL TL5.5II
Power amplifiers: VTL S-200 Signature and Zesto Eros 500 Select
Cables & interconnects: Nordost Tyr 2
Accessories: Nordost Qx4 power conditioner and Qb8 AC distribution center; Finite Elemente Spider equipment rack
