Money, that unreliable buyer of happiness, has at times proven effective at delivering good sound. It can buy other things, as well: Audiophiles can swap cash for products that function as objets d’art, as status symbols, or even as canny investments.But—do you think money can buy peace of mind for the audio enthusiast who frets over binding voice-coils, leaking capacitors, drifting resistor values, oxidizing connectors, aging or incorrectly biased tubes, and that most pernicious worry of all, distortion and premature record wear from incorrectly aligned phono cartridges? Sadly, most of those neuroses, some quite reasonable, remain unaddressed by cash almighty.

Early attempts at solving that last one had promise but failed to deliver. That’s been especially true of straight-line tracking tonearms, which look good in theory but often wind up torqueing the phono-cartridge cantilever to an extent that compromises the newfound tangency and stresses the poor thing’s suspension—one step forward toward peace of mind, two steps back toward audiophile angst. A different path was taken by proponents of the pivoting tangential-tracking tonearm, as originated with the Garrard Zero 100 record player of the 1970s, but that example was compromised by less-than-perfectionist levels of engineering and build quality, not to mention a mindset that disregarded the deleterious effects of resonances and micro rattling.

Pivoting tangential-trackers are once again appearing in showrooms and at shows, none more than those sold under the name Thales, designed by engineer and former watchmaker Micha Huber and manufactured by Swiss company HiFiction. At this writing, there are no fewer than three Thales tonearms—Michael Fremer wrote about their top-of-the-line Statement tonearm ($21,090) in the May 2019 Stereophile—and two similarly distinctive Thales turntables to support them. Earlier this year, Huber sent me the combination of Thales TTT-Slim II turntable (at $6750, the least expensive of his two models) and Simplicity II tonearm (at $9450, in the middle of the Thales line; the two can be bought as a package for $14,180) and suggested I give them a try—which I happily did.

Description
Thales borrows its name from Greek philosopher-mathematician Thales of Miletus (ca 624 BC–ca 545 BC), who noted that in a semicircle, triangles where one vertex is a point on the arc and the other two are at the ends of the arc are, invariably, right triangles. Micha Huber used Thales’s Theorem as the basis for a tonearm whose arc of travel across the record is such that no matter where the stylus lands, that point is the vertex of a right angle that has the axis of the headshell and the radius of an LP as its sides—which precisely duplicates the angle of the mastering lathe’s cutterhead to the master lacquer.

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Huber patented this de sign in 2004 and since then has refined its construction to its present realization: a 9″ tonearm comprising two not-quite-parallel aluminum armtubes with an articulated headshell at one end, a split counterweight at the other, and a Gimbal referred to by Thales as a Cardanic bearing—a nod to Gerolamo Cardano, another dead mathematician—at its fulcrum.

In the Simplicity II, the individual bearings that comprise the gimbal, and that enable the headshell’s articulation, are HiFiction’s patented TTF (Thales Tension-Free) bearings. Ostensibly, these are ball-and-race bearings, but their inner races, as well as their axles, are shaped and machined in such a way that they also offer the benefits of single-point jeweled bearings.

The Simplicity II employs a clever split counterweight: Fastened to the rear of each armtube is a weight of semicircular cross-section with a cylindrical auxiliary weight—the position of which determines downforce—fastened only to the inboard armtube. To correct for inconsistent downforce from the beginning of the LP groove to the end, as can result from such a design under the worst of conditions, an eccentrically weighted disc is fastened to the auxiliary weight and can be rotated and then locked in place to compensate for imbalances.

VTA is adjusted in a familiar manner. After loosening the grub screw that secures the arm pillar within the arm-mount collet, the user adjusts a vertically oriented machine screw that passes through the arm gantry and bottoms out in a dimple on said collet; as that screw is turned clockwise, the gantry and thus the arm rise up, and as it is turned counterclockwise, the gantry is lowered. The grub screw is then retightened. Azimuth is adjusted by loosening two lock screws that secure the gimbal to the structure supporting it, then turning a setscrew hidden away in that structure before retightening the lock screws. The Simplicity II does not offer an anti-skating mechanism, perhaps because this arm, with its distinctive geometry, isn’t susceptible to the lateral forces that plague traditional pivoted arms, which rely on generous amounts of stylus overhang and headshell offset to achieve near-tangency. I’ll leave it to the manufacturer—who specifies the Simplicity II’s tracking error as a remarkably low 0.006° maximum—to comment.

At first glance, the very compact TTT-Slim II turntable—it measures only 16.5″ wide by 12″ deep— appears to be a simple, low-mass, solid-plinth design, not unlike so many others available today. Only one of those assumptions proves correct. The platter bearing, drive motor, and tonearm are indeed all fastened to a single structure, but that structure is neither simple nor lightweight: The plinth, like the platter, is machined from solid aluminum—both have a lightly textured anodic finish in anthracite gray—the combination tipping the scales at a surprising 26.4 lb. (Compare that to 13.2 lb for a Rega Planar 3.)

The plinth is machined with a number of hollows and grooves and channels, the largest of these to accommodate its inset platter; as with the classic and no-less-Swiss Thorens TD 124 turntable, the Slim II’s platter mat rises less than an inch above the surface to which the tonearm is mounted. The platter is supported by a machined polymer subplatter, next to which sits a small DC motor that’s isolated from the plinth by means of an intricately shaped mounting apparatus. The metal motor pulley is positioned as close as possible to the edge of the subplatter, to keep the round-cross-section rubber belt as short as possible. Wiring for the motor run through a channel machined for that purpose, which leads to the onboard drive circuitry and battery pack: Although it’s connected to the user’s household AC when its Li-Ion batteries need charging—a running time of 20 hours is specified—the external charger is claimed to be electrically separate from the drive circuitry when the turntable is switched on. That said, in order to prevent any electrical emissions from polluting playback, howsoever slightly, HiFiction recommends disconnecting the charger when it isn’t needed, thus keeping the Slim II off the grid during playback.

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The platter bearing has a well of ductile iron, lined with a sintered bronze bushing that’s said to be saturated with oil during a heated soaking process, guaranteeing maintenance-free operation “for many decades.” The bearing shaft is made of hardened tool steel, hand-polished with basswood and diamond paste. The 7.7 lb platter, machined with a heavy rim to maximize inertial mass, is said to be tuned to one single resonant frequency, then fitted with an inlaid record mat of an unspecified high-density material. (It looks and feels a little like lead, but I’m sure that’s not so.)

The final contributor to the Slim II’s performance is a trio of isolation feet: smallish, height-adjustable fittings in which the contact elements—steel balls—are centered with pliant rubber fittings. The manufacturer suggests that these “spikes” effectively isolate the turntable from horizontal vibrations.

Installation and setup
My review sample of the TTT-Slim IISimplicity II combination was installed in my system, with all apparent skill, by Wynn Wong of HiFiction’s North American distributor, Wynn Audio. That being said, the Thales turntable and tonearm, not to mention their well-executed packaging, seem to have been designed to ensure both ease of setup and consistently precise results.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Plexiglas-and-aluminum cartridge-alignment jig—in their very good manual, HiFiction refers to this as a sight unit (footnote 1)—supplied with the Simplicity II: To avoid compromising the arm’s articulating headshell, the design requires that cartridges be mounted on a small aluminum plate that can, more or less quickly and easily, be removed from that headshell, to which it’s locked with a single 0.9mm setscrew. The Thales sight-unit is itself made with a recess into which the cartridge and plate fit—perfectly—and has sight-lines that enable unambiguously correct positioning of the cantilever and stylus. I was impressed that HiFiction invested the effort and care to create such a tool. To borrow a phrase from a soap commercial of yore, Don’t you wish everybody did?

In the weeks following Wynn Wong’s setup, I disassembled the player in part, mostly just to see what makes it tick. And well into the review, I installed the Simplicity II tonearm on my vintage TD 124 turntable (footnote 2). I have now handled, adjusted, and just plain used virtually every element of these two products, and I have to say this: In 34 years of writing about playback gear, I have seen no products better made than the Thales turntable and tonearm, and precious few—that equal them. Indeed, to merely handle the Simplicity II tonearm—to note how utterly free of friction yet also how solid, smooth, and free of play its bearings are—left me in awe of its manufacturing quality. And although I’m far from obsessed over VTA adjustments, I couldn’t help being impressed by how easy it was to adjust arm height. Again, this is accomplished in the same manner as any number of other tonearms of my experience—yet to a one, all are downright crude compared to the way this has been executed on the Simplicity II.

Listening to the TTT-Slim IISimplicity II combination
If only because the Thales record player was so different from my own—small instead of large, new instead of vintage, DC instead of AC, low-torque instead of high-torque— I was a bit startled by how well it performed in many of the performance aspects that are most important to me: color, drive, momentum, sheer juice. I prejudged and came away shocked. There it is.

The Thales combo, equipped with an EMT TSD 15 N SPH cartridge (the standard-mount version of the TSD 15 pickup head), played Sonny Rollins’s “Without a Song,” from The Bridge (RCAJapan Victor RCA-6011), like somebody’s life depended on it: The music lost not one iota of its bounce in the translation from my Garrard 301-based player to this one. And I was especially pleased that Bob Cranshaw’s double bass sounded no less full, and no less snappy, than via my reference player, although the Thales combo lacked the vintage rig’s sense of impact.

But there was more to it than that. In “Without a Song,” during his last break before the bass solo, Rollins plays back-to-back triplets that swim against the song’s rhythmic stream in a manner I’m unable to describe. The Thales player nailed it, just as well as I’m used to hearing from my Garrard (and few others). And in the comparatively pensive “Where Are You,” each one of guitarist Jim Hall’s luxuriantly arpeggiated chords was a pure, tactile delight. Tactile goodness also characterized the piano sound on Herbie Hancock’s debut album, Takin’ Off (Blue Note Cisco 84109), especially Hancock’s solo on “Three Bags Full.”

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to the Electric Recording Company’s reissue of Henriette Faure’s recording of Book One of Debussy Preludes for solo piano (EMIERC 350 C 004, footnote 3). Thus, I can say with confidence that the Thales player allowed the piano every bit the same (large) scale as my Garrard-based player and conveyed the same eerie languidity, right down to the last weird, disembodied A at the very end. And the Thales combo wasn’t far off the mark in its ability to suggest the instrument’s corporeality, al though my Garrard allowed it to sound meatier still. Another good piano recording—by Reinbert De Leeuw, performing early pieces by Erik Satie (Telefunken 6.42198 AW)—sounded similarly good via the Slim II and Simplicity II, with good weight and concomitantly good scale.

But there’s nothing like Satie’s music, with its reliance on slow tempos and richly voiced sustained chords, to show up speed instability of whatever origin—and my copy of that De Leeuw LP has a bit of a warp in it: I’m accustomed to hearing from it a bit of warp-wow. I went back and forth a number of times between the Thales and Garrard-based players, and there was no question that unwanted pitch variations were less severe through the latter, presumably owing to the greater effective length— 307mm vs the Thales’s 229mm—of my EMT 997 tonearm. All other things being equal, the longer the tonearm, the less severe the audible effects of warped and off-center records.

On one of those freewheeling Saturday mornings when I felt like annoying my neighbor—the one who plants things on my lawn and whose dog is bigger and even barkier than mine—I rooted around for the perfect loud Neil Young song to blast and hit upon the live version of “Ohio” from Journey Through the Past (2 LPs, Reprise 2XS 6480), performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Calvin Samuels on bass and Johnny Barbata on drums. On this track, which segues brilliantly from the last note of a live performance of Steve Stills’s “Find the Cost of Freedom” (both songs are in D, played with drop-D tuning on the guitars), Stills and Young both play big, hollow-body Gretsch guitars that seem forever on the verge of feedback—a sound I adore: they scream with thick, sustainy notes that complement the very emotional vocal performances. On the Thales, that all came across as well as I’ve ever heard, along with a fantastically impactful, resonant sound from drummer Johnny Barbata’s ride toms. It was a satisfying and altogether moving experience. No one called the cops.

One of my two favorite versions of the Bruckner Symphony No.8 is the one recorded in 1964 by Eugen Jochum and the Berlin Philharmonic (2 LPs, Deutsche Grammophon 138 91819); my copy is an early tulip pressing, and it sounded thrilling on the Thales. The Wagner tubas in the first movement sounded especially real—at the other end of the dynamic spectrum, so did the very delicate harp playing in the scherzo and the adagio. The Thales combo seemed to do the best it could with DG’s less-than-lushly-textured string sound, but it was the equal of my Garrard in scale.

My only criticism was that the Thales player didn’t equal my reference in its ability to shrug off surface noise. (What is it with DG records from just about any era Is it my bad luck, or were their records less durable than average?)

Listening to the Thorens TD 124Simplicity II combination
Though it may strike some as faint praise, the first thing that impressed me about the sound of the Thales arm on my vintage Thorens was that it maintained my system’s core musical strengths: Lines of notes moved in time with realistic momentum and flow, and neither musical timing nor pitch relationships became the least bit ponderous or unclear—high praise, indeed, considering that I’ve been spoiled by such musically accomplished arms as the Schick, the GrooveMaster II, Sorane ZA-12 and SA-1.2, and, of course, the EMT 997. The scale that opens Maazel and the Vienna Philharmonic’s Sibelius Symphony No.4 (Decca SXL 6236) was as spellbinding as ever. In the chords that open Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by Peter Maag and the LSO (DeccaSpeakers Corner SXL 2060), the harmonies between the notes played by the flutes and, ultimately, the oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horn, sounded true, not sour. And the moderate swing tempo of Frank Sinatra’s “Oh, You Crazy Moon,” from Moonlight Sinatra (Reprise FS-1018), was propelled by relentless rhythm guitar and drum kit, sufficiently steady that Sinatra’s own timing shifts dazzled rather than annoyed.

Among the other records I tried was a long-time favorite: 1979’s Manzanita, by the Tony Rice Unit (Rounder 0092). Apart from his groundbreaking lead work, guitarist Rice is celebrated by fellow musicians for his no-less-accomplished rhythm playing, characterized by a unique combination of fluidity and hard-charging momentum. The Thorens-Thales combination perfectly captured that sound—in both Rice’s playing and its real-time influence on the other musicians in the ensemble—on “Blue Railroad Train” and others. No less delightful was the way this combination reproduced the tautly sustained notes from Todd Phillips’ double bass on “Midnight on the Stormy Deep” and highlighted the stylistic differences between David Grisman and Sam Bush’s mandolin playing throughout the album.

Conclusions
In the sense that I’m accustomed to thinking that the ultimate in involving playback is the sole province of high-torque idler-drive turntables and transcription-length tonearms—and of phono setups that require hours of painstaking tonearm and pickup alignment—the combination of TTT-Slim II turntable and Simplicity II tonearm was a surprise, and a very pleasant one. While it never delivered the sheer impact I continue to associate with old-style low-compliance pickup heads, both stereo and mono, it consistently played music in a way that captured and held my attention and brought out most of the things I love about my favorite records.

I admit coming away from this review thinking of the Thales tonearm as the star of the show: Just as the above-mentioned Sorane tonearms transformed my lovely old Thorens TD 124 into a drivemeister of a player that all but rivaled my Garrard 301’s ability to communicate music’s sheer physicality, the Thales Simplicity II enhanced its ability to play lines with musical clarity and nearly hypnotic momentum and flow: playback that was just as involving, but in a slightly different way. And it must be said: The Thales Simplicity II is nothing less than the most well-made tonearm I’ve ever used.

While the Thales products aren’t cheap, they betray a level of craftsmanship that’s hard to find in any consumer product—that and an engineering approach that’s as conservative as it is original: What else can you say about a designer who, unlike so many competitors, can make a turntable this good without having to make it grotesquely, uselessly big?

Especially for the user who prefers standard-mount cartridges over old-style pickup heads—a group that surely includes the vast majority of phonophiles—the Thales player, and especially the Thales tonearm, absolutely must be given serious consideration by anyone whose budget can stretch this far.