Pro-Ject The Classic Evo

The Classic meets the 175 VPO to melt design-ideas

The new Classic Evo is based on the successful EISA Award winner The Classic and the experience we won designing and building our icon turntable the 175 VPO. The main improvement is the sub-platter, where we used the experience we gained from designing the Vienna Philharmonic Recordplayer to add key changes to the Classic Evo, adding performance features that are rarely seen in this price category. For improved comfort, an electronic speed change was built in, which lets you switch from 33 to 45 rpm (and vice versa) with the push of a button.

Compared to the old Classic, we improved the subchassis; we tried to make it heavier and stiffer to reduce resonances.
Isolating the platter and tonearm from the resonances of the motor and main plinth is the target.

Platter & sub-platter

The heavy aluminium main platter construction utilises advanced thermo plastic elastomers (TPE*) for optimising resonance behaviour.
A drawback for most of the old designs was the platter. Casted platters all have been heavy (which is good for speed constancy and low wow and flutter) but suffered very much from ringing effects which again caused colouration of the sound. The platter of The Classic Evo is precisely machined out of a special aluminium alloy again damped with TPE*, which offers special damping abilities. The main bearing construction we use is a similar system as the one on the Vienna Philharmonic Recordplayer.

The diamond cut precision alu sub-platter, like in the limited edition Vienna Philharmonic Recordplayer, enables much improved tolerances. This extraordinarily sophisticated part is accurately machined and guarantees a very good isolation between bearing noise and the platter itself.

New carbon/aluminium tonearm

The radical new designed Classic tonearm is the result of 25 years of experience in mechanical construction. The tonearm tube is made out of a sandwich of carbon and aluminium: carbon for stiffness and speed, alu for better damping. The bearing has been upgraded to the same type that is used on our Pro-Ject CC EVO tonearms. It facilitates frictionless vertical and horizontal movement, guaranteeing precise tracking across the entire duration of the record. The counterweight incorporates a TPE* damper which allows us to reduce the amplitude of the tonearm cartridge resonance frequency by 50%.
As typical for Pro-Ject and absolutely not standard at that price range we offer also azimuth and VTA adjustment to use a variety of cartridges.

MC Cartridge

We supply as standard the Ortofon Quintet Red moving coil cartridge. However, as the tonearm offers excellent damping and flexibility as well, its effective mass can be called middle heavy, so it is also a very good partner for MC cartridges. As the Classic is a wonderful state of the art deck, we decided to use an MC cartridge to use the potential of the player. MC cartridges are expensive, but the better choice. They are rarely used at such a pricepoint. We are therefore convinced to offer you an unbeatable price-performance packge.