Lector 0.6t

I am hugely conflicted about the Lector 0.6t, I really wanted to like and enjoy it. I did loads of research, read the reviews, talked to a variety of dealers and took the plunge - still wish I handn't...

It all started when I "down-graded" my system, it actually ended up sounding better. I simplified, got myself a pair of powered Focal studio monitors, a Japanese semi-pro pre-amp and a nice Italian Tube/Valve equiped CD Player - a Unison Research CDP. The whole sounded fab, really musical and clear, allowing you to listen right into the midle of the mix.

After a while (and when funds allowed!) I though I would like a little bit more of the same from the CD player, so looked around and finally settled on a new Lector from a main, approved Lector dealer in the UK (I live in Ireland). It was Italian and with nice tubes/valves and looked good.

Although I was promised they were in stock, once the dealer had my money he told me he had to order one in. Okay - not a great start but never mind, mistakes happen...

It duly arrived (3 weeks later) and I carefully unpacked it to find that the tray wastn't restrained (opened and closed depending on how the box was tilted) and the "new" remote control had a set of dead batteries in it....

Mmmm, maybe it had been tested in Italy and they hadn't put it all back in he box properly. Still, it would sound excellent, right?

Well, it sounded ok, but not (to my ears) as much of improvement as I would have liked - infact not as good as the Unison Research player. I couldn't work out why it wasn't working for me, I repositioned speakers, changed cables, tried different valves, everything, but it still sounded muddy. This went on for about 6 weeks over christmas.

Finally, I turned the volume up without a disk playing and found that one channel was incredibly noisy. So I changed valves, cables, inputs - everything no change.

I phoned the dealer who told me to contact the distributer. The distributer told me to send it back (at my cost) to Italy! Finally, after much emailing, the dealer agreed to get it looked at. It went away in March and finally came back in June - still with the same problem.

At this point, I had had enough. The factory took 4-5 weeks to send a new board to the repairer in the UK, the dealer had to pushed in order to do anything that he was legaly obliged to do and the distributer didn't seem able to help. At this point I returned the player adn did what I sould have done at the start, got an Icon Audio CDXT player.

I am very disapointed in this machine, I wanted to love it like I had loved the Italian player I had previously, but dodgy build quality and incredibly bad service has put me off for life from Lector.

Sorry Lector, but a big thumbs down from me :(