The laws of physics have not changed.
21st century materials and manufacturing techniques have.

This is The Evolution of a Revolution...

Introducing the 21st century turntable... the MS21

The original Merrill Heirloom Turntable was designed some 25 years ago based on the principles of the Bruel & Kjaer application notes - Audible Effects of Mechanical Resonances in Turntables.

download a copy of the Bruel & Kjaer paper ( Adobe Acrobat required)

During the engineering process, Mr. Merrill purchased the equipment called out within the essay, built test fixtures and devised his designs, which are considered by some to be among the most thoughtful and innovative in the industry, even to this day.

Also, when the Merrill Heirloom was designed some 25 years ago it contained many state of the art innovations. Some innovations are used by other manufacturers today and are noted below.

Firsts

• The first turntable to use an energy management design.
• The first to employ the use of acrylic plastic.
• The first lead damped platter.
• The first fluid damped motor.
• The first aluminum resin driven platter.
• The first critical elasticity drive belt design.
• The first energy canceling center clamp.
• The first to use polymer resins in turntable construction, such as the pulley.
• The first production turntable to employ a periphery clamping ring.
• The first and only company to utilize a complete one-piece sub chassis which includes the tone arm mounting boss as well as the bearing assembly as a true one piece unit.
• One of the first to employ a digital push button speed control/power supply.

With the formation of our new company - MSR, LLC. we have incorporated new materials and manufacturing processes to evolve the design and reflect the technological improvements which have occurred over the years. State-of-the-art materials are used throughout including Cell Cast, Co and Ter Polymer Resins as well as greatly improved bearing manufacturing techniques. All parts are designed from 3-D modeling and CAD programs and CNC machined. They are inspected against the prints for dimensional accuracy and flaws, de burred and finished by hand.

A great amount of time goes into assembling our tables, as they are built by hand, one at a time. They are set up with the customers tone arm, run and checked before being packaged for shipment.

To learn more about the design please visit our Design Philosophy page.

Tone arm mounting boss and sub chassis thickness: mounting boss: 1.000" complete thickness in that area is: 1.500"

*NOTE: Because of the nature of the thickness of the sub chassis in that area, the under side of the sub chassis may have to be machined with a relief to accommodate some model tone arms that require such clearance. Once the sub chassis is sent to the manufacturer for machining, we will determine this operation needs to be preformed.

download the MS21 manual ( requires Adobe Acrobat)