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Vertere has unveiled its new Imperium Motor Drive, which the company says was driven by owners of its SG-1 and RG-1 turntables looking for an affordable motor drive superior in performance to its Tempo, which was launched last year. The new design derives from Vertere’s Reference Motor Drive and includes a simplified power supply and control functions.

The purpose, according to Vertere, was to make a motor drive: “with as pure a sine and cosine wave output and as little noise as possible. The design and cabling also had to consider possible RF pickup and ingress.”

Enclosed in a shell precision CNC milled from solid aluminium is a twin-regulated linear power supply feeding the primary circuit, the 12V external supply for the record player’s illumination and the digital regulation for the microprocessor and DAC. The double screened programmable and updatable microprocessor digitally generates the sine and cosine waves (the claim is it’s switchable to be ± 0, 0.25 percent, 0.5 percent) to the equally double-screened DAC. The output of the DAC feeds two ‘power amps’ provided by: “an extremely clean” supply to drive the approximately 17V the motor requires.

The Imperium boasts a gold-plated, two-layer PCB utilising extensive ground planes and fully regulated voltage rails powering different circuit sections – components which the company says have been carefully selected to ensure in-control and ‘clean’ final delivery of power to the motor. The PCB mixes SMD and thru-hole components, copper foil shields the entire digital, microprocessor and DAC circuitry and then the whole PCB is secondarily shielded using a stainless-steel plate.

The motor drive output is a gold-plated 7-way thread-locked DIN connector, joining Imperium power to the turntable via a dedicated motor link cable.

Imperium is supplied fully optimised and set up for the record player motor. In the case of an upgrade, the retailer can adjust the output voltage and phase for the lowest motor noise and vibration. This is adjustable for 33 and 45rpm rotational speeds. The Imperium comes with a motor link and 2m Redline mains cable.

Available to buy now for £7,950, you can find out more about Vertere's Imperium Motor Drive here.