Written by: Jonathan Gorse Created: 15 November 2024
Conclusion
Like many audiophiles, I have assembled a fairly high-end system and accumulated a large music and film collection over the decades. For years I’ve been pondering the idea of replacing my cheap Knosti Disco Antistat manual RCM with a vacuum-based one. I was tempted by the Loricraft, which is unquestionably a magnificent record cleaner, but it is pricey. I looked at the more affordable Pro-Ject RCMs but ruled them out, too, on account of their noise and internal fluid reservoir, which is less convenient than an external reservoir. Considering noise, fluid reservoirs, performance, and price, the Prodigy Plus stood out. It is expensive enough to be well engineered, supremely quiet, and devilishly effective but not so expensive as to be hard to justify.
All told, the Prodigy Plus is an outstanding record-cleaning machine. In fact, it’s so good that I purchased the sample unit I received for this review. Consider for a moment the fact that even a modest vinyl collection of 500 records has a current replacement cost of nearly $20,000. A record-cleaning machine will protect that investment by ensuring contaminants don’t get baked into the grooves. It will reward you for years with increased clarity and vastly reduced surface noise on every record you spin. It will also minimize stylus wear, an important consideration, particularly if you run an expensive moving-coil cartridge. Listeners unable or reluctant to drop five grand on a top-end RCM will find the Prodigy Plus, or one of the other models in the Prodigy line, to be quite simply the best alternative.
. . . Jonathan Gorse