"I visited Mr Shindo in his workshop in Tokyo.

He lives in a district called Ochanomisu (literally translates to "Tea’s water")

in Tokyo which is one station away from Akihabara on the Chuo line, and which is

within easy walking distance of the main shopping area of Akihabara.

His workshop was on the second floor of his premises. A rather narrow stair way

leading to an Aladdin’s cave of vintage audio equipment; his collection of Altec

Lansing Speakers has to be seen to be believed. The room was full of them! He

also had quite a few classic turntables lying around too, including a Thorens

TD124, a few Garrards 301s, a Technics SP10mkII, and a few other less well

known models.

One of the Garrards (shown in the picture), had a 15 inch platter, too large to

accommodate the speed change control, which had been removed, the idea behind

this platter being to provide an extremely high moment of inertia. The

turntable also had a 12 inch Shindo tonearm fitted, this design being based on

the Ortofon RM309. Mr Shindo, told me that the 15 inch platter was a one-off

design, and is not in general production, however the conventional 13 inch

platter (which I use on my own turntable) is available and is selling well.

We had a brief discussion about the availability of other Shindo products in

Europe, apparently the new RoHS regulation has cut off the supply of Shindo

Tube amps to the European Market. I’m not sure how this has had an affect on

Jonathan Halperns business.

http://www.toneimports.com/shindo/shindohome.html

Finally, we had a brief chat (in my very bad Japanese) about the Garrard sound,

Mr Shindo quite simply attributed the power and granite like bass of the

Garrard to the high torque motor – not much disagreement there I guess.

Best regards,

Brian"