Dual

Brothers Christian and Joseph Steidinger began making clockwork and gramophone parts in St. Georgen, a Black Forest town, in 1907. The Dual name arrived in 1927 with a motor that ran on mains power or a wound spring, and by the 1970s the company was Europe's largest turntable maker, with more than 3,000 employees. Today's CS-series decks are still built in Germany, and the clockwork mindset hasn't left: precise tonearms, spring-loaded antiskating, direct drive on the Q models, real automatic operation on the CS 529. Drop the needle. The 119 years of practice show.