Pro-Ject places a strong emphasis on building its own components, maintaining design, engineering, and manufacturing facilities within Europe’s borders. Pro-Ject firmly believes that by making its own components — as opposed to working with contracted vendors — it’s better able to fulfill its superlative standards of quality control, consistency, and longevity. From building the tonearms and machining platters to populating circuit boards and routing and painting the turntable plinths, virtually the entirety of Pro-Ject’s production process occurs in its state-of-the-art European facilities.
The quality of components used to make a turntable is directly related to its quality of sound, with the platter being of the utmost importance. Thus, Pro-Ject precision CNC-machines its platters — as shown in this photograph of a platter bound for Pro-Ject’s Debut EVO 2 model — to ensure completely constant speed stability. After machining, this platter will be fitted with a TPE ring underneath the perimeter to lower its resonance.
A ceaseless drive to further performance lies behind Pro-Ject’s manufacturing processes, and unique materials are used whenever they present an advantage in overall performance. For example, this picture displays a tonearm with a carbon fiber arm tube and a rigid aluminum bearing assembly. Carbon fiber is a supremely strong and lightweight material, with an exceptional ability to limit mechanical energy from getting to the phono cartridge. Moreover, the large aluminum bearing assembly draws interference away from the tonearm, allowing the precision bearing to enjoy frictionless movement across both vertical and horizontal planes.
Pro-Ject believes that a True Balanced connection represents the best way to get the signal from your phono cartridge into the phono preamp. Why? Balanced connections eliminate common mode noise that’s picked up by the cables connecting your turntable to the phono preamp. In addition, a balanced circuit in the phono preamp amplifies the delicate signal from the phono cartridge with lower distortion, ensuring a quieter background and a superior dynamic range. And while many turntables simply rely on standard single-ended RCA connections, the vast majority of Pro-Ject’s turntable and phono preamp offerings boast the ability to upgrade to a full True Balanced connection.
While Pro-Ject turntables wield exceptional performance right out of the box, upgrading your Pro-Ject product is a simple and accessible means to bolster its performance and sound quality. Many of Pro-Ject’s models can be upgraded with aluminum sub-platters for additional mass — this maintains speed stability and lowers resonance. Furthermore, other models can be augmented with an acrylic platter to achieve similar benefits. And for those who wish to improve tracking accuracy, minimize distortion, and achieve a more detailed sound profile, high-end moving-magnet or moving-coil cartridges are a natural choice. No matter which upgrades you choose, your Pro-Ject turntable can be perfectly tailored to your taste to elevate your listening experience and take your hi-fi setup to a whole new level.
Every Pro-Ject turntable utilizes a small DC power supply, taking the unrefined AC power from your wall and converting it to DC. That DC power is then fed to a DC/AC generator within your turntable, which powers the AC motor. Why? This system’s advantage is found in the generator, as it creates a completely new sine wave that fully decouples your turntable from the dirty AC power coming from your outlet. This results in steady power being sent to the motor, thereby sharpening up speed stability. Even better, Pro-Ject uses AC motors — made in-house — for their superior speed and accuracy and minimal mechanical noise.
