SUPATRAC

ABOUT

The SUPATRAC Story
A New Angle on Analog In a quiet London suburb, amidst the clutter of test equipment, prototype jigs, and stacks of vinyl, one man was quietly rethinking a cornerstone of analog playback. His name was Richard Braine, and what began as a thought experiment about tonearm geometry became one of the most radical revolutions in high-end audio in decades.He called his invention SUPATRAC — short for Sideways Unipivot Arm with TRACking assistance — a deceptively modest acronym for a design that would challenge and outperform some of the most revered tonearms in the industry.

A Problem Worth Solving
For Richard, the problem was clear: even the best traditional tonearms were compromised. Bearing chatter, skating forces, inconsistent azimuth during playback — these all conspired to dull the musical experience. Most arms pivoted horizontally, with the stylus suspended below the axis, which introduced instability and subtle sonic smear. Richard believed this geometry was inherently flawed.What if, he asked, the pivot was placed above the tonearm, letting gravity work with the system rather than against it? This idea became the seed of the SUPATRAC concept — a tonearm that would behave like a pendulum, naturally stable in both axes, and perfectly responsive to groove modulation without bearing friction.

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