Origin
He built the turntable he wanted to buy.
John Stratton did not come to turntables as an engineer. He came as a customer. Decades of listening had taught him exactly what he wanted from a turntable, and why he could not find it. Heavy tables sounded stable but slow. Light tables sounded quick but thin. Suspended designs could be superb, then needed adjusting again a month later. As he told Resistor Magazine, “My goal was simple. I wanted to develop a line of turntables that I would buy myself.”
So he wrote down what a turntable has to do. It must sit level, hold the tonearm without moving, turn at the right speed and stay there, and keep vibration out, both from the room and from itself. Everything beyond that is a design choice, and John makes design choices on performance, never on marketing.
Modifying
He started with other people’s turntables.
Pure Fidelity began with parts. John made sub-platters, platters, bearings and feet for other makers’ turntables, to a higher standard than the originals. The improvement surprised him, and it surprised the owners. Friends sent him their tables, then friends of friends.
When a friend asked whether he had thought of building a complete turntable, John had a plinth made and assembled a table around it. He took it to Audiophilia in Victoria for an informal listen. A few days later Anthony Kershaw called to ask for a formal review. The table earned a Star Component designation, and a year later Audiophilia named it Product of the Year. Pure Fidelity was founded in 2015, and its turntables have been in Stereophile’s Recommended Components, Class A, in every edition since 2023.
Building
A hybrid approach.
The first Pure Fidelity turntables were built on the principles that still guide every table: intermediate-mass plinths in Ultra MDF, parts machined on CNC, and veneers laid by hand. Every plinth is signed before it leaves. John began signing them because he wanted his name on each table that left his bench, as a matter of accountability.
"The Symphony's performance is up there with the very best I've heard, and some of those 'tables cost twice or three times as much as the Symphony."Anthony Kershaw, Audiophilia · Star Component, 2024
Today
Still small.
More than a decade on, the workshop is still small, and the tables are still built one at a time in Vancouver.
