Review: Funk Firm Funk turntable

The Funk on the other hand is a bare bones solid plinth design with no suspension but bearing, motor and arm all fixed to an unusually funky looking piece of MDF. The shape was apparently conceived for aesthetic reasons but the placement of the feet is claimed to control the way energy enters the plinth, Arthur says they place the bearing at the 'sweet spot', ie the place where it will be least affected by vibration.

But what is really funky about this turntable is the Achroplat platter. This is made out of expanded polyvinyl, a foamed vinyl that's said to match a vinyl record in impedance terms but offers much higher internal damping than solid vinyl. This makes it the lightest platter to be found on a decent turntable since the Meitner AT-2 of the early nineties - and that had a platter the size of a record label. Other factors, such as the inverted sapphire bearing and DC motor, follow accepted engineering practice and are not particularly unusual - the PT decks all had DC motors for instance - but such a low mass platter is pretty radical.

The accepted wisdom is that you need mass to keep speed constant which is why platters often have mass loading on the periphery as this provides greater inertia. Achro is short for achromatic or colourless which seems an apt description for this material. Funk has even produced a thinner 5mm Achromat for use on other turntables and priced at £44, it wrought a distinctly positive, energising effect on a Project RPM 5 we had to hand.

The Funk is one of two new turntables, its sibling the Funk V (£765) uses what Arthur calls Vector drive, an arrangement of three pulleys around the acrylic sub platter. This approach is said to minimise the judder introduced by the pull of the belt toward the motor. The standard Funk has a low-tension belt to minimise this and as a result takes longer than average to get up to speed.

Unfortunately, because the feet are isolated by sorbothane they don't necessarily sit perfectly straight, which undermines the aesthetics somewhat, a factor that is also compromised by the sticker around the on/speed knob - screen printing would be a big help here.

Performance
All this is forgiven however when you get to play a familiar record and realise what a peach it is - this has to be the most dynamic and revealing turntable at anywhere near its price point in a long while. We tried a number of cartridges in the basic Rega RB250 (£125) tonearm supplied and heard exactly what each of them brought to the party. This inevitably lead to the fitting of our reference van den Hul Condor moving coil, at over five times the cost of the Funk, and on this occasion fitted with a Cartridge Man Isolator (an £85 device that costs too much for what it is but is a positive influence to be sure).

That might seem OTT but we started off with more modest needles and kept realising that the Funk was being limited by them - it was probably being limited by the RB250 too but we didn't have a better Rega fit arm to hand and what's more the results it produced were still pretty impressive.

Despite the sorbothane damping this turntable benefits dramatically from well isolated support. We tried it with two Townshend Seismic Stands sitting between B&W 802Ds (speakers that put plenty of energy into the floor and thence the hi-fi rack) and found that the stiffer one made the Funk sound fatiguing and loud in the bad sense.

Atop the older and much floatier Seismic Stand however, the deck's finer qualities could be easily enjoyed. In no particular order, it demonstrated impressively low noise and hence very good low level resolution, remarkably good separation of instruments and voices, stunning dynamic energy and a sense of nimbleness combined with monster bass that defied belief given the nature of the design. With the Prodigy's Poison on board the Funk got the 802Ds to literally play tunes with the floorboards - it's ability to stop and start at low frequencies is stunning.

It's capable of things that decks costing three or four times as much can only dream of and to say we're intrigued by the abilities of the pricier Funk V is an understatement. It would also be fascinating to hear what the Funk could do with a better arm, a Hadcock or an SME for example, but for the meantime we're having so much fun with this bargain that it can wait.

Verdict:

This is a remarkably revealing and neutral turntable for almost any price and a stunner at under £500. The deck's detailing leaves something to be desired but the sound is huge, revealing and engrossing. Get one soon before the price doubles.