Note that this is a discontinued product. You may want to visit the brand's page here to browse their newer products.
What reviewers think
Bloggers and YouTubers have tried this product—so we've summarized their strongest opinions below. Links to full reviews follow.
Product Strengths
- Exceptional build quality, featuring Italian craftsmanship
- High-precision German-made bearings ensure fluid movement and tracking stability
- Offers comprehensive adjustment capabilities, including adjustable VTA, anti-skating, and azimuth
- Premium internal wiring with AWG36 Hyper Litz shielded 99.9999% OFC cables
- Elegant aesthetic design
Product Considerations
- Installation requires careful setup
- May be over-engineered for casual listeners
Comparisons (according to reviewers)
- Compared to a Transrotor rig, the B-5.1 combo offers a more lively and engaging sound, with deeper, more propulsive bass
Takeaway: The Gold Note B-5.1 tonearm is a beautiful piece of Italian engineering offering exceptional performance and adjustability. It is well-suited for serious vinyl enthusiasts seeking to extract the finest details from their records with a lively and engaging sound.
All
B-5.1
reviews
Manufacturer details
9” Ball Bearing Tonearm
Total length: 315mm
Total weight: 200g
Effective length: 242mm
Overhang: 19mm
Offset: 24°
Arm wand: Aluminium 6000
Shaft: 23mm
Dynamic effective mass: 10g
VTF: 0.176N (18g)
VTA: adjustable on collar
Lift: hydraulic
Anti skating: wire
Azimuth: adjustable on the headshell
Internal cables: AWG36 Hyper Litz shielded 99,9999% OFC
External cables: 1,5m custom 4 pole DIN/RCA
Brand highlights
Taking a step back to look at reviewers' thoughts of the brand's entire lineup—not just this product—what stands out most is the following:
- Gold Note distinguishes itself through its holistic "systems thinking" approach, meticulously designing each component to synergistically function within a complete Gold Note audio ecosystem.
- The brand's unique design philosophy, inspired by the Italian Renaissance and the Catenary Curve concept, combines aesthetic beauty with functional vibration control and structural integrity.
- Gold Note's phono stages, such as the PH-5 and PH-1000, offer exceptional cartridge matching capabilities, boasting a wide range of gain, impedance loading, and EQ curve options accessible via an intuitive touchscreen interface.
- They offer upgrades that are usually power supplies or tube output stages, often providing a running change in production.
Select products
T-5
- Positioning: The entry-level turntable in Gold Note's lineup.
- Description: Features a compact and practical design with a 15mm ultra-clear glass platter that minimizes noise and enhances detail extraction. Unlike more advanced models like the Valore 425 Plus, uses a manual speed change system, making it ideal for budget-conscious users who prioritize simplicity and portability in smaller spaces.
Valore 425 Plus
- Positioning: A mid-range model offering a balance of performance and affordability.
- Description: Features a 23mm POM platter and a high-torque synchronous motor for stable rotation. Compared to the Giglio, offers a more compact form factor.
Giglio
- Positioning: A high-end turntable with a focus on traditional craftsmanship and modern technology.
- Description: Stands out with its catenary curve-inspired plinth and high-density POM platter, providing exceptional structural rigidity and sound precision. It offers more advanced motor control and vibration reduction compared to the Valore 425 Plus.
Bellagio Conquest
- Positioning: The flagship model, representing the pinnacle of Gold Note's turntable technology.
- Description: With its massive structure and unique thirteen-plinth design, delivers groundbreaking stability and vibration control. It features the longest spindle ever made for a turntable, setting it apart from the Mediterraneo X with its focus on ultimate audio performance and structural innovation.
Our take on the brand
Look inside the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
The design of our turntables in the mid and high range relies on a very unique geometry that’s mathematically defined as the catenary curve, a shape that is found across nature (from spider webs to rope statistics) and firstly described by Galileo Galilei in the 17th century. The curve was first leveraged to design load-bearing structures such as arches and bridges since it offers the best rigidity/mass ratio. For turntables, it's an optimal as it provides really high rigidity with minimal mass giving the turntable great stability and resilience while minimising the amount of mass that could store potential energy (such as vibration). As a side effect, it creates a beautiful shape that elevates the design — this is a very Italian approach, developing creative solutions that serve boh performance and aesthetics.
Another key feature is the electric control of the motor leveraging a built-in power conditioning stage with a triple AC-DC-AC conversion to feed the motor with ultra-clean current, which is crucial as our turntables feature synchronous motors (calibrated on the AC).
Lastly, the design of the bearing/spindle is developed to achieve the strictest of tolerance with higher quality materials, and you won’t find similar designs on any turntables in the same price range since it’s extremely expensive to manufacture — it’s a core feature of our turntables that enables superior sound quality even though it’s completely hidden from the eye.
What's your approach to customer support?
We have a dedicated inbox for customer support [email protected] that is monitored 24/7 and a response time of around 24h. Customer should always contact Gold Note directly, our customer support will then manage their enquiry appropriately and put them in touch with the relevant contacts (such as our local distributor) if needed.
We used to rely primarily on our local partners in the past to provide quick support, however we have recently moved to a more centralised approach since we wish to establish a direct contact with our customers and ensure they get all the information directly from the source.
Today we can in fact guarantee fast response time and - since we are the manufacturer - more precise information to determine whether the product needs a simple firmware update, a hardware fix or a replacement.
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
Since we manufacture all sorts of sources — from turntable to streamers — we usually to suggest a mix of genres and it’s really hard to narrow it down to just three tracks:
For classical, we love "Dance of the Tumblers" from the Snow Maiden by the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Eiji Oue (Reference Recordings,1998).
For electronic, our go to is "The Expert" by Yello (Polydor, 2021).
For jazz and vocals, it’s hard to pick between Cassandra Wilson’s "Strange Fruit" (Blue Note, 1995) and "Blues in My Heart” by Fiona Boyes (Reference Recordings, 2020).
What other products pair best with yours?
As a system manufacturer, we design our products to be part of a Gold Note system and therefore that’s the highest degree of synergy you can reach. The idea of designing full systems is generally frowned upon as the main objection inevitably is: if you design all sorts of products, how can you beat a specialist that only makes amplifiers?
The answer is somewhat counterintuitive and I believe it’s not fully understood by the public yet so I’ll briefly summarise it here — engineering audio systems is fundamentally to design ways to manage signals, whether digital or analogue. The knowledge compounds by researching all areas of signal transmission and amplification, and can then be used to improve on designing electronics, loudspeakers or tonearms.
For example: researching and designing a cable leads to gaining insights that can then be deployed when designing PCBs; R&D on phono stages where dealing with low voltage signals and ultra-low noise components will inform the design of amplifiers. This positive loop goes on affecting all areas and increasing the knowhow of the team, leading to better products.
Used
Gold Note
What if you spend more?
Further development of the 9W1, designed with a slightly shorter effective length allowing a wider range of turntables to work with an AMG tonearm. Excellent spatial presence and dynamic performance owed to a resonance-optimized design. All of AMG‘s precision adjustments of tonearm setup parameters are offered, with highest grade materials, individually assembled by hand and carefully measured and tested.
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Our summary
Product Strengths
- The 9W2 tonearm is beautifully made with superb execution, smooth bearings and no play in the two dimensions
- Excellent fit and finish, with quality in the packaging and clear instructions
- The AMG Giro provides a very low noise floor, allowing more details to be revealed in recordings
- Musically satisfying, the Giro has a sense of lively confidence and direct musical communication, is quick, clean, and presents players with verve and vitality
- Offers the ability to adjust each geometrical aspect of cartridge setup and alignment, including VTA/SRA, overhang and offset, azimuth and bias
Product Considerations
- The Giro's controls do not always respond to one's first fingertip touch
- Azimuth and bias adjustments may be exacting, as they are devoid of any sort of incremental scale or zero point
- The bottom end definitely loses weight as it goes deeper, but it's not as great a loss as first impressions suggest
- The Teatro moving-coil cartridge was found to be unusually sensitive to dust accumulation on the stylus' tip
- The 9W2 arm only uses one grub screw to hold the arm in place, and some feel two screws are a more effective method of holding an arm in place
Comparisons (according to reviewers)
- Vs Rega RP10: the AMG Giro is richer and warmer sounding, has a slightly quieter noise floor, a bit more weight and power at the bottom end, as well as a bit more dynamic oomph
- Vs AMG Viella: The AMG Viella has a bit more weight and scale and better detail retrieval—advantage of a 12 inch arm over 9 inch?
Takeaway: The AMG Giro turntable and 9W2 tonearm are beautifully made with stunning levels of fit and finish, offering clear set up instructions and sound quality to match. It provides deep levels of musical pleasure to make you forget about the gear and immerse yourself in the beauty of the music.
Video review
Our take on the brand
Designed to the same extreme precision engineering standards as our turntables, every tonearm is painstakingly hand assembled with the trademark craftsmanship that you would expect from AVID.
Supporting your cartridge rigidly whilst playing a record is vitally important and the reason we have harnessed our bespoke hyper strong titanium arm tube and simply pushed rigidity to another level.
superlative
Our rigid bearing architecture is paramount to delivering solid images etched in space, so each of its components are manufactured to unbelievably tight tolerances.
Nexus will astonish you with its ability to uncover previously camouflaged musical nuances with crisp clean clarity, outstanding solidity and precise superlative sound.
FIELD OF FORCE
Natural forces pull a tonearm, ever increasingly towards the centre of the record, which left uncorrected can result in a distorted sound.
Bias compensation is the mechanism that counteracts this, and our design, gradually increases the field of force as it gets closer to the centre, so your musical enjoyment remains constant from start to finish.
Our purpose designed low capacitance external phono cable reassuringly anchors into place using an superior right angled DIN connector and terminated with high quality gold plated RCA plugs. For purists wishing to embrace the naturally balanced output of a phono cartridge, the cable is also available fully balanced with XLR connectors.
Our summary
Product Strengths
- Expertly produced to be one of the most versatile hi-end arms on the market for real-world use
- The build translates into musical delivery, achieving high levels of low frequency grip and dynamics
- Made of an ultra-rigid Grade-9 titanium designed to resist torsion and bending
- Fitted with high-specification ball bearings and incorporates high-precision bearing shafts to ensure minimal friction and precise movement
Product Considerations
- The headshell is a one piece design, being permanently fixed to the main wand for rigidity, meaning there's no easy way to adjust azimuth
- Setting anti-skate is a bit more manual than most
- The review sample had a quirk where flicking the cueing lever would cause the arm to stop halfway down—requiring assistance
Comparisons (according to reviewers)
- The Nexus at £4,500 is still around a grand cheaper than what SME was charging for its Series V before it went off sale
Takeaway: The Nexus tonearm is a superbly engineered and simple to use piece of equipment designed to work with a wide-range of pick-ups and it can hold its own on any turntable that's up to its standards. It's a worthwhile option for those seeking a versatile hi-end tonearm.
Video review
Our take on the brand
Since 1953, Ortofon has been designing tonearms with the philosophy of combining craftsmanship and technology.All parts and every component of the tonearms have been upgraded with material meticulously chosen to minimize unwanted vibration and distortion, ensuring crisp clear, and accurate sound. Careful attention to precision and durability of every part and assembly in both models ensures lasting durability for years to come.The AS-309R is a 12 inch tonearm.
Our summary
Product Strengths
- Jewel-like quality and non-fiddly competence
- Precision machining, ease of setup, and an attractive price for such a well-designed and manufactured arm, make for an attractive combination of enticements
- Provides removable head shell convenience and versatility without paying a sonic price for it
Product Considerations
- The AS-309R has an unusually long 323.5 mm effective length and pivot to spindle distance of 311 mm, so be sure the turntable can handle it
Comparisons (according to reviewers)
- Vs Pro-Ject EVO 12 Premium HG—in terms of build quality and feel, the Pro-Ject is 1080p, while the Ortofon is definitely 4K or 8K, the Ortofon is in a different precision league
Takeaway: The AS-309R is a well-designed and manufactured 12' tonearm with easy setup and precision. It would make an excellent choice if head shell swappability is a priority.
Video review
Our take on the brand
Our summary
Product Strengths
- The Fatboy brings each cartridge's strengths to the fore as well as revealing the sonic differences among the cartridges
- The tonearm's preciseness and linearity parallels and complements the sound of the Vanquish table
- The tonearm's strongest suit is its dynamics and that special ability to rapidly move and shift between dynamic levels
- The Fatboy's ability to recreate a ginormous soundstage
- The Fatboy's slightly heavier mass also allows for the use of lower compliance and heavier massive cartridges
Product Considerations
- The Fatboy falls slightly short of ultimate in the areas of finesse, refinement, and total sense of ease
- There's also some decrease in bass texture
- The tonearm can also at times sacrifice harmonic integrity for detail
- Setting up the dual pivot version of the Fatboy tonearm, in particular azimuth, can be a little tricky and trying
- The character of the new VPI 3D printed Fatboy tonearm lies ever so slightly to the yang side of neutral, no part of the frequency spectrum is emphasized to the detriment of another
Comparisons (according to reviewers)
- Compared to VPI's earlier all JMW Aluminum-based tonearm, the Fatboy is superior when it comes to resolution, speed, and dynamics—and eliminates much of the sonic signature from the previous 3D printed tonearm
- Compared to earlier 3D generation VPI arms, the new Fatboy tonearm is a sizable step up from VPI's earlier 3D printed arms
Takeaway: The VPI Fatboy tonearm is a stunning product and could easily be many audiophiles' final tonearm. The Fatboy's slightly heavier mass allows for the use of lower compliance and heavier massive cartridges.
Video review
Our take on the brand
What competes at this price?
Our Summary
Product Strengths
- Ultra-precise ceramic bearings provide superior and silent tracking
- Premium material construction ensures both visual appeal and acoustic superiority
- Comprehensive adjustment capabilities allow for precise fine-tuning
- Excellent resonance control thanks to the sectional design of the titanium arm wand
- High-quality internal wiring ensures signal integrity
Product Considerations
- Installation requires careful setup and may benefit from expert guidance
- 23mm mounting diameter may require modification for some turntables
- Premium pricing tier
Takeaway: The Gold Note B-7 Ceramic Tonearm is a high-end product that uses great materials and careful design to bring out the best sound from vinyl records. It is made for serious vinyl fans who want top performance.
Video review
Our take on the brand
Our Summary
Product Strengths
- The TP 160 tonearm combined with the TD 1600 offers quality that is hard to beat
- The TP 160 is stable, rigid, extremely smooth-running, and comprehensively adjustable
- The TP 160's low-friction design allows the TAS 1600 cartridge to operate more precisely
- It is a modern-day version of the legendary EMT Tontechnik professional arm 929
- Exceptional build quality
Product Considerations
- Manual lift operation requires a gentle touch to avoid stylus impact and sub-chassis wobble
- The removable headshell design introduces a slight compromise in stiffness
Comparisons (according to reviewers)
- The TP 160 is better and more balanced than the TP 92
- The TP 160 is comparable to the Linn Ekos, but at a much friendlier price, and is superior to the Akito
Takeaway: The TP 160 tonearm improves the turntable's performance with its quality build and adjustability. It is designed for those who appreciate a smooth and detailed listening experience.
Video review
Our take on the brand
Our Summary
Product Strengths
- Designed with a focus on achieving the lowest possible resonance and optimal tracking accuracy
- Constructed from high-quality materials, including lightweight yet rigid aluminum
- Features a unique tapered design that minimizes unwanted vibrations
- Adjustable azimuth and vertical tracking angle (VTA), allowing users to tailor the setup to their specific cartridge and listening preferences
- Employs thick-walled aluminum arm tube to ensure the cartridge is held securely above the record and aid the transmission of vibration away from the cartridge
- Offers cascading features from the top-model NEXUS—such as the micron tolerance bearings and the adjustable progressive Bias
Product Considerations
- The Altus uses thick-walled aluminum tubing for the main tube, whereas the higher-end Nexus model uses more exotic materials for its tonearm tube
Comparisons (according to reviewers)
- Vs Nexus: The Nexus model uses exotic materials for its tonearm tube, whereas the Altus uses thick-walled aluminum tubing for the main tube
- Vs Nexus: The Altus headshell is produced through a precise laser cutting process on solid aluminum, whereas the Nexus headshell is precision-engineered from solid aluminum and undergoes rigorous machining to ensure compatibility with the arm tube
- Vs Nexus: The Altus also uses the same DIN connector, RCA connectors, and high-quality external and internal cable loom as the NEXUS, the only difference is that the ALTUS is through-wired whereas the NEXUS allows the user to change the headshell wires
Takeaway: The Altus is a well-engineered tonearm designed for optimal tracking accuracy and minimal resonance, made with quality materials. It is a good option for those seeking a balance of performance and value, offering features trickled down from higher-end models
Video review
Our take on the brand
Our Summary
Product Strengths
- Simple and elegant design
- Exceptional structural rigidity combined with ultra-low friction
- Simple adjustments for vertical tracking force, azimuth, anti-skating, and vertical tracking angle
- Easy setup due to a mounting bar that connects to the tonearm with one allen screw
- When paired together, the Satisfy tonearm and the Benz Micro cartridges offer value
Product Considerations
- Clearaudio offers limited aftersales service
- Does not get the best out of cartridges like Ikeda or Ortofon SPU
- Vertical tracking angle cannot be changed while playing
Comparisons (according to reviewers)
- Only the Tri-Planar matched the Satisfy Carbon Fiber in musical realism
- Each of these arms, with the exception of the SME 3009, do some things better than the Satisfy Carbon Fiber
- The Satinwood arm was the warmest of the three versions, sacrificing a slight amount of transparency and micro dynamics
- The Ebony arm tube sounded bolder and more substantial compared to the Carbon Fiber and Satinwood versions
Takeaway: The Clearaudio Satisfy tonearms offer a simple yet effective design with good rigidity and easy setup, especially when paired with the right cartridge. It is a solid option for those seeking a musically realistic experience.
Video review
Our take on the brand
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Our Summary
Video review
Our take on the brand
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