EMT 928 II Battery Powered Turntable

The EMT 928 II is the current expression of a turntable philosophy the company has held to since the 1950s. A record deck, to EMT, is a piece of precision measuring equipment that happens to make music — a mechanical instrument in which every gram of mass, every decoupling point, and every current path is there for a reason.

The chassis is a solid block of aluminum alloy, milled and finished in Switzerland, resting on four decoupled spherical feet. Total weight of the machine is 23 kilograms, and every one of those kilograms is doing acoustic work — the plinth is not a shelf for the drive, it is part of it. The platter itself is 5.5 kilograms, driven by a 20-watt motor that gets it to speed and holds it there.

Where the 928 II departs from every other turntable in its class is the power supply. The motor and its control electronics run on internal batteries, not on the mains. The charging circuit monitors state automatically and reports through a dual-colour LED. A full charge runs the deck for forty hours at 33 rpm with a ten-hour reserve behind it. The mains hum and RFI that ride the ground of a wall socket never reach the motor — because the motor is never connected to the wall while it is playing a record.

The bearings and drive discipline show up in the measurements. Wow and flutter is held to ±0.07% at 33 and 45 rpm on the IEC 386 measurement, and rumble is 85 dB down at 33 rpm on the IEC 98 weighting. Three speeds are provided — 33⅓, 45, and 78 — with speed-up times of 10, 12, and 20 seconds respectively.

The tonearm mount is prepared for a 9-inch EMT arm at a mounting distance of 215 to 245 mm. Output is on RCA with a separated tonearm ground. A 12-inch arm — the 912 or 912-HI — can be fitted with the EMT 928/912 adapter, which mounts the longer arm in the rear position and provides the additional output sockets.

The 928 II can be ordered as the chassis alone, or as a matched front end — with the EMT 909-HI tonearm, or with the arm and a JSD 6 or JSD Pure Black cartridge already fitted and aligned in Switzerland before shipping.