MoFi MasterDeck Turntable, $6000

If you’re looking for a great turntable, with a great tonearm, MoFi has unbeatable values.

The UltraDeck at $1500 is an easy choice as the best bang for your buck. There are a hundred reasons why. You can read about them at Dave’s Faves.

If you’re willing to go north of UltraDeck, please consider MoFi’s new MasterDeck. It’s a much heavier bigger brother with significant refinements. MasterDeck competes with the priciest tables in our biz for many times less money.

MoFi tables are designed by Allen Perkins who owns Spiral Groove. Spiral Groove tables start at $36k sans tonearms. Allen has boiled down all of his parts choices to points of diminishing returns. That’s plenty good enough for any of us who work for a living.

MasterDeck is heavy with tapered platter (15 lbs alone) design. The platter has an aluminum core and is covered with Delrin. The combination of weight and non resonant material create the balance Allen thinks is best. No, don’t be tempted to put a rubber or cork mat on a MoFi table.

MasterDeck uses Spiral Groove’s Encapsulated Inverted Bearing design. This minimizes friction and wear. It comes with HRS isolating feet which are valuable for leveling as well.

The tonearm is a 10” Perkins original. It has a carbon fiber tube that is internally tapered for rigidity and damping. The arm uses gimbal and unipivot principles. The bearings are synthetic sapphire and ruby construction. There’s a unipivot point supporting it vertically and two ruby balls that support it as it rotates around its axis. Those 3 points offer the fast energy transfer and stability of the gimbal, but still give the performance advantages of a unipivot. The arm has a removable shell but the wires are traditionally fixed, eliminating an obvious source of signal degradation.

MasterDeck’s arm has a high degree of adjustability: Azimuth, VTA, Overhang, VTF and Anti-skate are all finely tunable. Cardas cable is hardwired for the arm. The counterweight is designed to travel across the pivot point to optimize the moment of inertia.

The lower portion of the plinth is made of MDF. The next two layers are aluminum. They house the electronics and switches. The arm board is aluminum and removable.

MasterDeck plays 33s/45s & 78s. It has a four digit digital readout which allows precise speed control adjustments. Please note, many expensive tables on the market have been proven to NOT run accurate on speed. Most of us don’t have a good enough ear to catch it. With MasterDeck, you can be sure of your speed/pitch.

Stereophile’s reviewer writes about MasterDeck’s sound. “MasterDeck is a forensic tool, a musical CSI, dissecting a record’s every nuance from the hidden depths of its grooves. It laid bare the mix, soundstage, tone, dynamics, frequency range, and life force of the music. If there’s a better turntable for nearly $6k, I haven’t heard it. An exceptional music playing machine.”

R&R HOF 2025 Nominees:

Who’s Going In Next? We’ll find out in late April. Artists or bands aren’t eligible until 25 years after their first commercial recording. I’m betting one is a slam dunk.

Top Candidates:

Bad Company

The Black Crowes

Mariah Carey

Chubby Checker

Joe Cocker

Billy Idol

Cyndi Lauper

New Order

Oasis

Outkast

Phish

Soundgarden

The White Stripes