Ken Micallef

3 weeks ago | analogplanet.com | Mike Mettler |Ken Micallef

Turntables, Turntables, and More Turntables at Munich 2025, Plus Some Tonearms & Cartridges Too The assignment for High End Munich 2025 was simple, and direct: “Show me turntables. Lots and lots of turntables.” And who better to carry out such a focused task than my go-to table-loving colleague and main product reviewer for AP, the always estimable Ken Micallef.

2 months ago | analogplanet.com | Mike Mettler |Ken Micallef

AXPONA Video Report: New Turntables From Well Tempered Lab, TriangleArt, TW Acustic, Vertere, AVM, and More! Our in-depth AXPONA 2025 coverage continues! In today’s installment, our chief product reviewer Ken Micallef shares video footage of as many turntables that he could get on camera in 9 minutes (give or take) — plus he zeroed in on a few cool new tonearms and cartridges too, to boot. You can now watch Ken’s video report below, as well as on the official Analog Planet YouTube channel.

2 months ago | analogplanet.com | Ken Micallef

Manhattan’s All Blues played host to Zev Feldman’s traveling Record Store Day (RSD) cavalcade this past Wednesday, April 2, 2025. Joined by jazz journalist, Jazz and Coffee’s Syd Schwartz, Feldman gave the backstories and played selections from his upcoming RSD 2025 releases. These six RSD releases followed Feldman’s typical Jazz Detective approach, mining tapes from radio stations, performance venues, and collector’s vaults, pressed to virgin vinyl.

2 months ago | analogplanet.com | Ken Micallef

The Dr. Feickert Analogue Volare 25 25th Anniversary Limited Edition turntable — a.k.a. the Volare 25 — was designed and manufactured in Germany by Dr. Christian Feickert and crew. It builds upon the company’s original Volare model with a significant tonearm upgrade, a new low-friction bearing, a second motor, and more. The Volare 25 turntable ($4,795) includes the Serbian-made Auris W-10a, a solid aluminum tonearm that offers VTA, azimuth, and high-quality Auris copper wiring.

Mar 24, 2025 | analogplanet.com | Ken Micallef

I have a lot of jazz records. Too many jazz records. Thousands of jazz records. What to do with them all when I’m not playing/reviewing them on my home playback system? Well, that question was answered for me recently in quite an interesting way by the Spin Doctor of our sister site Stereophile — and occasional AP contributor — Michael Trei. Not so long ago, Mike had set up a $16k McIntosh MT10 Precision Turntable at a Japanese restaurant on the next block up from my Manhattan bachelor crib.