Wilson Benesch's GMT One System is a turntable like no other

(Image credit: Wilson Benesch)

Wilson Benesch has shared further details of a built-from-the-ground-up turntable system it says "sets the new benchmark from which all other analogue replay systems will be judged by".

The GMT One System – named after the reference GMT time zone – is the outcome of the South Yorkshire company's latest collaborative R&D project and has been created primarily to preserve valuable recordings, promising to minimise the impact of transcription and deliver "unprecedented levels of accuracy".

The project was funded with the help of £327,000 of Innovate U.K. funding, won by a Consortium comprised of Sheffield Hallam University (namely Dr F. Al-Naemi, Dr J. Travis and Professor G. Cockerham) and CAAS Audio (helmed by Dr C. Broomfield and N. Broomfield).

Together, they developed a new and "innovative" motor and dedicated poly-phase motor power supply system called The Omega Drive, which patents are being applied for and which comprises many design registrations. Within the motor drive system, poly-phase drive signals are synthesised by a microprocessor-controlled DAC module that controls each critical variable in real-time, while analogue, linear amplifiers then handle the transfer of these synthesised signals.

The GMT One System turntable sits within the R1 rack Wilson Beneach created for it years ago and features its N6 Carbon-reinforced, low-mass Moment tonearm (pictured above), which was developed collaboratively with a team of five engineers at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, Sheffield. We believe it to be one of three tonearms that will be made available, alongside the higher-mass, reference Graviton – made from a single piece of carbon fibre tube – and the low-to-medium mass CTi-30.

The GMT has been designed and developed in-house, which is where it will also be manufactured (including the electronics supplied by CAAS Audio). Pricing is yet to be confirmed but, following previous unveilings of prototype models (one of which we spied at High End Munich back in 2019), Wilson Benesch is hoping to publicly launch the turntable in January. We'll keep an eye out for more details.

MORE:

Read our 2021 Wilson Benesch Precision P2.0 review

Wilson Benesch's Torus Series to enter its next generation in the summer

10 of the world's most expensive turntables

Becky is the managing editor of What Hi-Fi? and, since her recent move to Melbourne, also the editor of Australian Hi-Fi magazine. During her 10+ years in the hi-fi industry, she has reviewed all manner of audio gear, from budget amplifiers to high-end speakers, and particularly specialises in headphones and head-fi devices. In her spare time, Becky can often be found running, watching Liverpool FC and horror movies, and hunting for gluten-free cake.

5 Comments Comment from the forums

F8lee

That's it! I am selling my house and all my blood (and the neighbor's little girl if I can lure her into my van) in order to buy one of these bad boys when they are released!
Reply
TheDodge

F8lee said:
That's it! I am selling my house and all my blood (and the neighbor's little girl if I can lure her into my van) in order to buy one of these bad boys when they are released!
Ah, but immaterial of just how fab the turntable is, what about the inferior medium it is designed to play? Vinyl is oh so vulnerable & degradable, deteriorating that little bit every time it's played! Digital mediums are so much more durable. Why all this retro movement to vinyl?

Take my digital advice, & hang on to your blood & everything else until coming to your senses!!!
Reply
F8lee

TheDodge said:
Ah, but immaterial of just how fab the turntable is, what about the inferior medium it is designed to play? Vinyl is oh so vulnerable & degradable, deteriorating that little bit every time it's played! Digital mediums are so much more durable. Why all this retro movement to vinyl?

Take my digital advice, & hang on to your blood & everything else until coming to your senses!!!
Why I cannot! I simply MUST experience the warmth and, um, extra-dimensional sonic qualities that only cheap plastic stamped with 100 year old technology can achieve, don't you see?

And it is for that same reason I lust for CAT MBX speakers (or, if I'm lucky, Wisdom Audio Wisdom Grands) with commensurate electronics like the Pivetta Opera Only amp. Of course, to afford those, I might have to take on an assassination assignment from a foreign government...

Oh, and I will need to find some adapter cables so i can connect my 8-track player to the kit as well...
Reply
TheDodge

Dear F8 (or lee, if I may be so bold), while appreciating your thoughts, I can't help but feel that the extra sonic qualities you refer to with vinyl is nothing other than the classic Kellog's 'breakfast experience'.

What am I alluding to, you might well ask? Why, nothing other than the 'snap, crackle, and pop' of vinyl grooves containing difficult to rout dust particles, and unavoidable stylus wear, so typical of the vinyl medium.

Now, I understand that 'old is gold', and 'let's not be pernickety about antiquity'. I love and respect history, and would dearly love to be still contacting others with two empty baked beans cans connected with a taught string, or even by using smoke signals from burning my rank underwear, but I now have a mobile phone which does the communications job so much better. Therefore, I've decided to let these rather clunky and inefficient technologies go, and have plumped for current day digital technology!

I've been living in China for the last 18 years, where the backlog of history is easily dealt with by collective amnesia when it's convenient. The general idea is: If it ain't digital, then it ain't 'appenin' (and probably never 'as). I think the public here think that records, if they are actually remembered at all, were those funny, heavy shellac discs, played on a turntable bearing a huge cone shaped horn on one side, and which can be purchased occasionally in trendy boutiques which sell facsimiles made from 3D printers at hugely inflated costs for the trendy Must Haves.

You may continue as you wish along this romantic, quirky path of 'beforedom technology', just as I still worship the aesthetic 70s beauty of the legendary Nakamichi 700 triple head cassette deck recorder, and recall gazing at it in Hardman's Radio and HiFi, in Manchester in the mid 70s with the starry eyed lovingness of a teenage girl looking at a Jackie magazine's pop star centrefold poster (hoping that's not too sexist & divisive, of course; just can't be too careful in these days of digital denouncements & cancel culture). I never did save the required 500 pounds to acquire that incredible item of technological performance and beauty, and have consequently never forgotten it. I still want one in my dreams, feeling deprived, as a baby without its dummy. The pangs remain the same, as one old 70s pop star might say.

However, I now possess a Microsoft Surface Pro 5, purchased 3,5 years ago, which to my eyes, supersedes the Nakamichi's side standing brushed steel cool that set it soooooo much apart from the rest, AND my Surface can do tons of things that the 700 couldn't have ever even begun to dream of in its analogue domain period.

Am I happy with my beautifully slim and elegant side standing digital tablet? YOU BETCHA!!!

I'm in love with digital items to extent that I'm having my whole family replaced as holographic images, and yes, that includes my deceased parents, processed from beloved digitally scanned images when they were strong & in their prime. And I'll remain in love with the digital medium until something better comes along, if and whenever that occurs.

Analogue was a drag even during its time, with all of its bulky, variable, and degradable quality, in my delighted digital view. I mean, I remember shamefacedly going back to the record shops (remember them?, they used to sell those vinyl record thingies) asking for the then current hot album to be replaced because the pressing wasn't up to scratch - oh yes!!, & then there were mild scratches sometimes caused by coarse cardboard inner sleeves. I could go on, but it would only mean I'd continue. It was truly abysmal. Digital is for me. Whoopee!

I hope you will be free of your analogue addiction in due course, and will truly enjoy the benefits of clean, (possibly remastered) digital purity, to pull you out of the darkness, and into the Brave New World of Digital Delight.

I'm not stating that Digital Is Everything In Perfection, but it's the nearest we've got at the mo, Joe.

We care about you, you know...

(And please be careful who you consider assassinating to afford your analogue 'ard on)
Reply
F8lee

TheDodge said:
Dear F8 (or lee, if I may be so bold), while appreciating your thoughts, I can't help but feel that the extra sonic qualities you refer to with vinyl is nothing other than the classic Kellog's 'breakfast experience'.

What am I alluding to, you might well ask? Why, nothing other than the 'snap, crackle, and pop' of vinyl grooves containing difficult to rout dust particles, and unavoidable stylus wear, so typical of the vinyl medium.

Now, I understand that 'old is gold', and 'let's not be pernickety about antiquity'. I love and respect history, and would dearly love to be still contacting others with two empty baked beans cans connected with a taught string, or even by using smoke signals from burning my rank underwear, but I now have a mobile phone which does the communications job so much better. Therefore, I've decided to let these rather clunky and inefficient technologies go, and have plumped for current day digital technology!

I've been living in China for the last 18 years, where the backlog of history is easily dealt with by collective amnesia when it's convenient. The general idea is: If it ain't digital, then it ain't 'appenin' (and probably never 'as). I think the public here think that records, if they are actually remembered at all, were those funny, heavy shellac discs, played on a turntable bearing a huge cone shaped horn on one side, and which can be purchased occasionally in trendy boutiques which sell facsimiles made from 3D printers at hugely inflated costs for the trendy Must Haves.

You may continue as you wish along this romantic, quirky path of 'beforedom technology', just as I still worship the aesthetic 70s beauty of the legendary Nakamichi 700 triple head cassette deck recorder, and recall gazing at it in Hardman's Radio and HiFi, in Manchester in the mid 70s with the starry eyed lovingness of a teenage girl looking at a Jackie magazine's pop star centrefold poster (hoping that's not too sexist & divisive, of course; just can't be too careful in these days of digital denouncements & cancel culture). I never did save the required 500 pounds to acquire that incredible item of technological performance and beauty, and have consequently never forgotten it. I still want one in my dreams, feeling deprived, as a baby without its dummy. The pangs remain the same, as one old 70s pop star might say.

However, I now possess a Microsoft Surface Pro 5, purchased 3,5 years ago, which to my eyes, supersedes the Nakamichi's side standing brushed steel cool that set it soooooo much apart from the rest, AND my Surface can do tons of things that the 700 couldn't have ever even begun to dream of in its analogue domain period.

Am I happy with my beautifully slim and elegant side standing digital tablet? YOU BETCHA!!!

I'm in love with digital items to extent that I'm having my whole family replaced as holographic images, and yes, that includes my deceased parents, processed from beloved digitally scanned images when they were strong & in their prime. And I'll remain in love with the digital medium until something better comes along, if and whenever that occurs.

Analogue was a drag even during its time, with all of its bulky, variable, and degradable quality, in my delighted digital view. I mean, I remember shamefacedly going back to the record shops (remember them?, they used to sell those vinyl record thingies) asking for the then current hot album to be replaced because the pressing wasn't up to scratch - oh yes!!, & then there were mild scratches sometimes caused by coarse cardboard inner sleeves. I could go on, but it would only mean I'd continue. It was truly abysmal. Digital is for me. Whoopee!

I hope you will be free of your analogue addiction in due course, and will truly enjoy the benefits of clean, (possibly remastered) digital purity, to pull you out of the darkness, and into the Brave New World of Digital Delight.

I'm not stating that Digital Is Everything In Perfection, but it's the nearest we've got at the mo, Joe.

We care about you, you know...

(And please be careful who you consider assassinating to afford your analogue 'ard on)
China, eh?

Well, aren't you lucky the commies are even allowing you to see this thread!
Reply

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