Dear Backers,
We’re looking back on an extraordinary year. We made huge steps in Wheel’s development, we’re building, and the future looks bright in many ways.
The past weeks I personally delivered and helped installing Wheels to early backers in the Netherlands. I’m honoured and delighted with the enthusiastic reception and positive reviews so far. I must confess we gave priority to a few later backers because of their personal circumstances, but when volume allows we work through the list as planned.
Unfortunately, Covid 19 has hit us this week. While inconvenient for now, we seem to be getting off well.
New support ring
We told you about how in the real world, records do not always meet the RIAA specification. To adapt to even more records, we changed the design of Wheel’s support ring. The new ring is made of a special sandwich of plastic and rubber layers, and now protrudes 0,75 mm inwards, offering better support to records that are slightly too small.
There’s a fine interplay between the support ring, the diameter and outermost grooves of the record, and the cartridge with the stylus. The newly balanced hardware and settings now supports all the records we know of. With the new ring, Wheel plays any 12” record you throw at it.
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in good health and good spirits!
Peter and the Wheel team