I’ve had that GyroDec for twenty years and it works as well at the end of that time as it did at the beginning. The sound quality from it is really awesome. The only alteration to it was that I had the arm board fitted with a height adjuster for the Rega tonearms.

I remember when I bought it I paid a little bit more for the black and gold version and I’m glad I did because I always preferred it to the aluminium and gold ones.

I think that the designer John Michell really got it right with the GyroDec. It does have a lineage back to David Gammon’s Transcriptor Hydraulic Reference, but it is a far better turntable.

The GyroDec has a suspended chassis and uniquely this is designed so that the centre of gravity is at the platter bearing. Different arms can be accommodated and the balance is maintained as the arm board for each arm weighted such that the arm and arm board combined weight is always 1 kg.

When the GyroDec first appeared it had an aluminium platter and a thick mat. Mine was the second version with an acrylic platter with no mat. The GyroDec is one of the few turntables I know of which has a pretty high mass suspended sub-chassis. Certainly when it was introduced turnables either had a fairly light suspended sub-chassis or they had no sub-chassis but heavy-ish plinths.

About a year or so after I bought the GyroDec I got the GyroPower for it which was a passive mains regulator. This improved the sound to an extent which really surprised me. However the best sound improvement for the GyroDec was simply to put it on a light hi-fi equipment stand, with no other stuff on the stand. I used a sound organisation shelf when I lived in London and a Hi-Fi News/Record Review WallNut II shelf in Hove where I now live. With a light dedicated stand the GyroDec sound really comes to life, the music sounds like it has been set free from record player.

For a long time I used a Rega RB250, then I had this arm greatly modified by Origin Live with new cable and counterweight. The improvements were good but not as great as simply putting the GyroDec on its own stand.

These are all from the Sugden Bijou range which was made for a few years in the 00s.

The eventual plan is that they will be in the new study I’m creating out of my old music room. However as that new study is currently work in progress the Sugden Bijou system is in my living room.

I am listening to it with my Sennheiser Reference Gold headphones and my Rogers db101 speakers.

The old system that used to dominate my music room is being sold on eBay at present.

I’m going through that big hi fi thing where you buy new stuff and then you want to listen to every CD/LP whatever through it that you own just to see what they sound like. Care has to be taken not to let this take over all your existence!

My initial impressions are really good. I’m listening mostly using my Sennheiser Reference Gold headphones because of my conversion to headphones over the last year or so. The temporary arrangement in my living room isn’t a great one for the Rogers db101s as they are quite far out from the back wall and they really need to be near it to reinforce their bass output.

The centrepiece of the Sugden Bijou system is the HeadMaster headphone amplifier which doubles up as a pre-amp for the Sugden AmpMaster.

As a headphone amplifier the HeadMaster really is truly superb. I did a lot of searching on the web about the Bijou stuff before my purchase at eBay. There were lots of conflicting reports about it.

I’m finding the amount of energy in the treble is quite new. My old Audio Innovations valve amplifier, now sold, did have very fluid and easy sounding treble, as of course valve amps do, but compared with the Sugden Bijou HeadMaster it in retrospect might have been a bit overly light in touch. I have a CD which includes Renée Fleming singing Straus’s popular Four Last Songs. The orchestra is the Houston Symphony and the conductor is Christoph Eschenbach. Renée Fleming’s singing on the CD is really stunning and the Sugden HeadMaster and CDMaster really show her singing in all its beauty. She has a combination of great finesse with controlled power, and the Sugden stuff is just so good with this kind of material. With the Audio Innovations amplifier I would hear the finesse, but too warm around its edges to really hear her nuancing, and not showing the power in her voice either.

Before I bought the Sugden Bijou stuff I did a lot of searching on the ‘net for info. The item of greatest interest was the HeadMaster and I read lots of comments and bits of reviews over the years. It is amazing how varied the impressions are.

The weirdest is someone in a forum saying that the HeadMaster had some deficiency which meant that it couldn’t play music with electric guitars properly. I do have lots of CDs with electric guitars which, in truth, I hardly ever listen to any more. I got one out, Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop CD, and I was very pleased to hear Jeff Beck’s guitar playing in its full glory.

People want to summarise the sound of the HeadMaster as being either “warm” or “cold”. Both temperatures are put forward as descriptions. I guess it shows how difficult it is to describe sound with words. My old Audio Innovations 500 amplifier was definitely warm but you can’t say that about the HeadMaster or the AmpMaster. I think the sound is quite vivid compared to what I’m used to, I saw someone describe it as “velvety” and I just might be tempted to say that it is a tiny bit velvety but really, most of all it is very neutral.

I’m selling most of my hi-fi at the moment at eBay, it is boxed up in the living room. In my “music room” now is just my Meridian 206B CD player, my Sennheiser HD540 Reference Gold headphones and a headphone amplifier, I bought about six months ago, which is a Pro-Ject Headbox II. The Sennheiser headphones and Meridian CD player I’ve owned for nearly 20 years.

The new part, the Pro-Ject headphone amplifier is, I think just coming to the end of its “running in” period and beginning to really sound good.

I’ve decided that I really like listening to music on headphones. The quality is superb and the idiosyncrasies of headphone listening don’t annoy me at all. The main idiosyncrasy is the weird sound staging, which is sort of in your head, however I’ve become accustomed to this and in fact I rather like it.

I originally purchased my Rogers db101s on eBay in June 2003. They had been the speakers in my living room Hi-Fi. Then in July I decided to sell the components of my living room Hi-Fi, I sold the amplifier and tuner leaving the db101s without a role.

First a bit about them and their appeal. According to the manual the styling is by Peter Stevens and the acoustics are by Andy Whittle. Peter Stevens is credited on the manual with projects including the McLaren F1 amongst some other exotic British cars. Andy Whittle is described as the Chief Design Engineer, Rogers International, UK Ltd.

They are pretty small with the following dimensions in millimetres:

The cabinet is injection-moulded ABS painted black and fitted with aluminium side-panels. The side panels are painted in cool colours and in fact there was a selection of nine possible finishes available, I haven’t seen them all just just a couple. The back of the cabinet is convex top to bottom looked at from the rear. According to the manual: The cabinet profile and carefully contoured back panel ensure that all internal standing waves are minimised, resulting in a cleaner and greater dynamic musical presentation.

I think possibly the most distinctive aspect of the design is what Rogers described as the floating tweeter. From the manual: The tweeter ‘floats’ in the middle of the bass reflex port. This design unique to Rogers optimises the full range directionality and driver integration of the db101. Looked at from the front the tweeter is in the middle of the bass reflex port. I’ve never seen this done in any speaker, I wonder if it really does bring any benefits or if it was done because it just looks rather cool.

From the rear the db101s look rather cheap I think. The back panel has clips for the cables and touching it suggests plastic rather than the more impressive sounding injection-moulded ABS. Although they look cheap I like the cable clips because they are really secure. The cable I’m using is bog standard stuff from Maplin which works just fine. Oddly enough on my speakers the top screw is missing for the back panel for each speaker. Fortunately the back panels seem to be very well screwed on and are very secure.

Athough Peter Stevens, the stylist, had been involved in the design of the Maclaren F1 and other exotic British cars I think the one car they remind me of is in fact the Frogeye Sprite. It’s those bass reflex ports with the tweeters in them sticking out like the headlamps of the Frogeye Sprite.

The Rogers db101s were very much ahead of their time I believe when they were put on the market in 1996. They were initially priced very high at just under £400, Rogers dropped this price substantially to boost sales, but this wasn’t enough. The Rogers company went out of business.

In 1996 the vast majority of Hi-Fi speakers were wooden boxes, it was a much more conservative market than today. There were a few different looking designs around but these tended to be viewed by Hi-Fi enthusiasts rather disparagingly as “lifestyle speakers”. I think the market for speakers today is very much more diverse. I feel that the Rogers db101s would fit today’s market better than that of 1996.

These speakers are suitable for many roles, not just Hi-Fi. They are extremely robust and can be used for small PA work or maybe for providing music at a party. As Mike Hennessy points out at his website (link at bottom) there is a protection device built into the crossover. They can also be wall mounted if required as the reflex port is on the front. Putting them on shelves or close to a wall will destroy the stereo imaging of which they are capable but I guess this is true of all speakers. They are quite bass light so mounting close to the wall does give a good balance by reinforcing the bass. The db101s are also very good for nearfield monitoring.

As I said at the top I’d been using them as the speakers for the Hi-Fi in my living room. The amplifier there was an Arcam with 40 wpc. They sounded very excellent with that amplifier and would also play very loud if wanted, although I never did.

When I was selling that living room Hi-Fi on ebay I was also looking for a good amplifier/speaker system for my computer. Obviously I had thought of using the db101 prior to the sale but the bulk of a regular Hi-Fi stereo amplifier had put me off. Then I discovered the Pro-ject Amp Box.

This is a 20 watts per channel class D amplifier. It is very small as can be seen from the pic. With this the Roberts db101s work beautifully as speakers for my computer. I’m using the standard analogue out port from my Mac Pro and this just behaves like a DAC and pre-amplifier for the Proj-ect power amplifier. For my particular purposes 20 watts per channel is enough but for playing really loudly the db101s would probably like a few more watts. I find they go quite loud enough. In fact I am sitting very close to the db101s, they are on a shelf on the wall behind the computer, the desk is right up against the wall, so it is not far.

I’m really glad I didn’t sell my Rogers db101s. They are excellent in their new role as monitors for my computer.

I’ve used the following websites for some information for this blog entry. You will find more info here about the Rogers db101s.

Mark Hennessy’s website

Mark Hennessy takes a pair apart and gives an excellent analysis of the design.

GB Audio Data Sheet

Facts and figures are here.

Home Theater Review

Ken Kessler writes in his inimitable style. He was very optimistic about them in this review which must have been written soon after their release.

Sound on Sound Review

Paul White likes them as well. A pity the general public weren’t enthused by these reviews

Rogers International Ltd.

Looking at this website you’d think they are still being manufactured