01 · Plinth
Oiled walnut
Mass: 11.4 kgA constrained-layer plinth — solid walnut sandwiching a damped aluminium core. Drains resonance into the chassis instead of the platter.
Sourced · Marlborough timber co-op
Every Te Awa is assembled by one person, start to finish, in our Auckland workshop. We machine, balance and measure each part before it ever joins the next.
A constrained-layer plinth — solid walnut sandwiching a damped aluminium core. Drains resonance into the chassis instead of the platter.
Machined from a single billet, balanced on a precision lathe to a tolerance most listeners never knew was the noise floor.
Ceramic ball, inverted spindle, sealed oil bath. The single most important component you will never see.
Unipivot architecture, carbon arm-tube, magnetic anti-skate. Light enough for low-compliance MC cartridges, stiff enough to disappear.
Our own-design MC cartridge. Boron cantilever, line-contact stylus, hand-coiled in-house. Optional upgrade to HMC-5.
Brushless DC motor in its own decoupled pod, driven by a precision speed controller. Vibration never reaches the platter.
Every Te Awa Mk II ships with its own measurement card — the figures below are the running average across the last 100 units. Reference range is the published Class A audiophile band.
Measurement protocol · IEC 60386 · independently verified · Acoustic Lab NZ 2026
A short field study of three rooms — a mastering studio, a private library, a Wellington flat. Same deck, three different acoustics, one consistent voice.
Each Te Awa is hand-built and tested for 96 hours before shipping.
Lifetime servicing included. No serial number ever leaves Aotearoa unwell.