Rega Products Now Available From HifiGear
We’re really pleased to announce the latest quality brand to be added to the HiFi Gear range; ‘Rega’, a well-established, British manufacturer of award-winning turntables, electronics and loudspeakers. A wide range of Rega products are now available in-store for purchase and demonstration.
Rega Research Ltd or ‘Rega’ for short is a quality manufacturer of award-winning turntables and accompanying hifi components. The company was formed officially in 1973 by Roy Gandy and Tony Relph based upon Roy’s commitment and dedication to engineering and constructing high-calibre hifi products. Roy’s first build was a pair of loudspeakers as a teenager, later progressing into a passion for turntable modifications and upgrades.
Roy worked as an engineer for Ford in the early days of his audio-component career and simply made turntables in the evening with help from a few of his friends and his mum. As business began to pick up, close friend Tony Relph and Roy Gandy registered REGA and began to distribute throughout the UK under Cosmocord. A year later, they were exporting products under the Rega name in West Germany, Denmark and France. As business began to grow, Roy was able to leave Ford with a redundancy cheque and invest in a dedicated Rega factory in Rochford.
1975 brought the release of the Planar 2, dubbed at the time as the finest entry-level turntable available. 1977 saw glowing reviews for the Planar 3 by Hifi News and Record Review and the reputation of the British brand was beginning to truly take hold. By 1980, the Rega company had a staff roster of thirteen people, a distribution network of twelve countries and twenty stellar UK retailers promoting, demonstrating and spreading the brand throughout the country.
Rega later moved premises to an old mill in a residential area in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. This factory birthed the first specialist tonearm models from Rega, the RB250 and RB300, the latter of which won an international award for its quality aluminium die casting.
1988 saw the first loudspeaker release from Rega, dubbed the ‘Ela’ with a range of electronics following several years later. The Elex and Elicit amplifiers were acclaimed among critics and consumers alike, staying true to the Rega design philosophy of building ‘high quality, specialist hifi components that are reliable, consistent and sensibly priced’. Listeners were now able to put together an entire system that followed these design principles. This wider product catalogue called for a larger factory, which was built in 1992 on the Temple Farm Industrial Estate in Southend-on-Sea.
Fast-forward to 2016 and Rega have come a very long way from their humble beginnings. Now selling to over 40 different export markets and building on average 2,000 turntables every month. Rega continues to grow and expand their operation and product range, with every product launch ringing true to their initial goal and founding principles. Because of this, you can expect every product with a Rega badge to perform to the highest quality in terms of both build and sonic reproduction. All Rega models include a lifetime warranty against manufacturing defects and are built to last.
