Teres Turntable / Portland

I don't have a Teres, but I almost bought one. In my opinion, after you reach a certain quality of bearing/platter/suspension, the differences in in the tables themselves are small. You will hear large differences in the sound, however, between arms and cartridges. If you had TWL's with the OL and Denon, you would no doubt love it. But there are many combos out there that in the end will be similar in quality and enjoyment. For instance, when I was just about to invest in the Teres, someone came along with a Basis 2001 for a steal of a price. Is the Basis Platter as heavy as the Teres? NO. But is the Build quality and bearing quality of the table as good? Probably so. Anyway, the point of all this is that you have many choices for the amount of money you will spend, and often you will get just as good of a piece of equipment, and ultimately sound that is as good. I would put my Basis 2001/RS A1 up against the Teres/OL250 anyday in a trial, and we would have a lot of fun trying to decide which was better. And maybe nobody would 'win', since each table has it's own strengths and weaknesses. One has a springy suspension, the other no suspension. One has a unipivot, the other a standard pivoting arm. Etc. The differences are not so important as the sound, and I believe once you spend a couple of grand on a fine TT, the differences come down more to preference than any really obvious build quality differences.

Aaird, I agree, and I spent the money I saved by buying the basic Teres, on the arm and cart. Of course, we would all like to be "cost no object" buyers, but ultimately we make some decisions based on the amount we have to spend. I decided that the basic Teres model provided enough of a quality drive unit for my needs and spent the balance on arm/cart instead of the lead shot weighting, which is really the only difference between the tables. As far as arm/cart choices go, I think that they should be purchased as a "pair" to match each other. Many combinations can give good results if they are well matched. I knew that I wanted to use a DL103, and needed an arm with quality bearings to handle it. After researching, I found an arm that had the capabilties of the top arms, at a very reasonable price, with the bearings and structure and mass I needed. The combination turned out extremely well, and I'm very happy with it. Since I like low compliance MC carts, if I decide to upgrade, I will have an arm that can handle any of them.

TWL, I think your choice was great. I actually got lucky, since I did not have quite enough money to get a combo like yours, and I was afraid I would have to settle for less. In the end, I got such a good deal on my TT that I don't feel I compromised much, if at all. But since this post needs to have something on-topic for the original poster, I would suggest that looking in the archives of the Vinyl Asylum (email me for the link) will reward you with hundreds of references to the Teres, and to the various arms and carts people have put on them. It amounts to this--No one says anything bad about the Teres, and usually the arms and carts are of sufficient build quality that nobody complains about them, either. Just buy the best quality arm and cart you can afford up front, and you will be happy with the combo.

Regards
Andrew

Well, it's been decided. I got a MINT condition basis 2500 with Graham 2.2, quattro-fil tonearm cable,clamp, dustcover and a 60 hour old Benz Ruby 2 cartridge from a local friend. The table is very very impressive. It already sounds as good (maybe better, but let's not go there) as my hotrod scd-1 playing sacd. I don't even have the ph-3 set up correctly for the cartridge yet. It's set up for my rega super elys, so the gain is too low. I'm ramping the gain on my aleph P preamp to compensate for now. I have an aleph Ono arriving soon, so I'm going to set that up for the cartridge.

I would still be interested in hearing how a teres compares to a rig like this.

Congratulations on getting a very nice analog rig. You will enjoy it immensely. I can't give you any insight on a comparison between Teres and Basis, because I have not done any A/B comparisons with them. Regardless, you can be assured that you have a high-class rig there, so comparisons are not that important. Just enjoy the music.