Simon Yorke Designs

Made in Spain

They make recordplayers. And this is all they have done for the last twenty-five years. They do it because, above all, they love music. For them, the recordplayer is not a ‘product’. It is a device for entering into music. It’s as simple, and serious, as that.

Their goal has always been ‘to create the perfect recordplayer’ (whilst accepting the impossibility of perfection) and thus they have been constantly questioning theirselves “how do you design and build a perfect recordplayer?”

From a purely objective perspective, the recordplayer must simply perform various mechanical tasks conforming to the physical properties of the analogue disc. With appropriate understanding of these parameters, it is not so difficult to make a device capable of extracting signals from an analogue disc. But is that it?

Surely the enjoyment of music is a uniquely human, and thus subjective, experience. As every human is different and each moment of his or her life is unique, how can they possibly build a machine capable of satisfying both objective need and subjective desire at every juncture? This question is at the fundamental core of Simon Yorke Designs.

To answer this question they must understand engineering and craftsmanship. But they must also be conscious, feeling people – in touch with their desires and idiosyncrasies, their moods and needs – capable of assimilating the very nature of what it is to be a sentient human being. Without this humanity they can, at best, fabricate a functional machine. But such a machine will never be adequate to their needs. They demand much more than this. They need a device capable of touching the soul.

To even contemplate the design and construction of such a thing, they must be versed in human psychology, understand concepts such as beauty and passion, and be cognisant of their history – architecture, design, art, sculpture, poetry and music – if they are to have any hope at all of bridging the objective and subjective worlds required.

Objectively, the recordplayer is a three-part construct: the transducer which converts mechanical movement into electrical signal, the travelling mechanism which carries this transducer (the tonearm) and the revolving platform which spins the disc – forcing the transducer to do its work.

Subjectively, the recordplayer is a device for stimulating emotional response.

To merge these two, utterly disparate worlds, involves not just appropriate understanding of both physics and human psychology but a capacity for bridge building because they can only invoke the third, subliminal world, by bridging objective and subjective experience. This is not an easy task. It has been the goal of art, architecture and philosophy since conscious time began. It’s about a search for meaning.

They do not see how it is possible to design a recordplayer turntable without knowing exactly the qualities of its tonearm. Neither they do not see how it is possible to design a tonearm without precise knowledge of the turntable that will support it. The two are inextricably and mutually dependent – as an automobile involves both motor and chassis.

The tonearms they make are parts of a complete, holistic recordplayer. They do not supply them for use with other turntables because they cannot guarantee the result and, in many circumstances, they simply will not mechanically mount on turntables designed for other devices. Nor do they fit foreign tonearms to their turntables – for exactly the same reasons.

They do what they do with passion and determination, and are mostly disinterested in the views or methodology of others. Their dedication to the cause of human creativity and their belief in the artistic value of their work is unrepentant. As such, business and profit are secondary concerns. To truly participate in their humanity is a more worthy goal.