For a company that makes no fewer than eight phono preamps ranging in price from £175 to £10,000, Musical Fidelity’s history as a purveyor of turntables is rather sparse and, it must be said, unfulfilled. True, 2002’s M1 was a mighty opening gambit and statement of intent cooked up by company founder Anthony Michaelson and then distributor, now proprietor, Heinz Lichtenegger – all crystalline acrylic magnificence and resonance-defying layer-cake construction that made a Linn Sondek LP12 look about as sexy as a filing cabinet. Mostly, it sounded the business, too, though come the tricky second turntable there followed many years of radio silence.
Finally, in 2015, a budget/mid-priced vinyl spinner called the Roundtable debuted as part of a compact, affordable MF separates system, the Merlin 1 (geddit?), but despite being…