I was doing the photography and graphic design for Transparent Audio all through the 1980s and 1990s, so saw a lot of the Well Tempered stuff. It was designed by Bill Firebaugh, but manufactured and distributed by Transparent.
The original WTT/WTA had a square motor, a white acrylic platter with a small (maybe 1 inch diameter) screw-down record clamp, a stainless steel arm with a single mounting point for the cartridge, and a cantilevered black rig for holding up the arm when it was at rest. The plinth was made from three slabs of MDF, with sheets of foam sandwiched in between, satin black finish. This original model eventually became the "Classic" (although with round motor).
When I say square motor, I mean that there was a square cutout in the plinth, and into that you tucked the motor, which is free-standing on its own set of feet, and is mounted to a slab of lead (12 lbs as I recall) to help drink up vibrations. This is the turntable that I have and use daily. Somewhere around 1990, they changed over to boring a large hole inside the plinth and dropping a motor into that, mounted on a circular hunk of lead.
Around that time, the line expanded to include three models: the WTRP (Well Tempered Record Player) was aimed at a budget-conscious user, with smaller and less massy plinth, simplified arm, but same principles. The Reference had a plinth made from Corian countertop material, and a more sophisticated system for adjusting damping in the arm "bearing" trough. The original continued on in the middle, and as I said, eventually became the Classic.
Along the way, the platter went from white acrylic to the black damped platter, which had a clamp similar in a appearance to a hockey puck (although smaller than a real puck).
Another improvement was the arm. This went from a stainless-steel tube to carbon fiber, and the headshell had an angled profile with two mounting holes. The original arm had only a single mounting point — a longish slot through which a single screw could be run down into the cartridge. With the carbon fiber arm came a new armrest that is a black pillar with a U-shaped holder at the top.
Through the 90s the Well Tempered line had these three models, then sometime in late 1990s the whole setup was sold to George Stanwick of Stanalog, who was also importer of van den Hul. At that point I lost contact with WT.
But meanwhile Bill Firebaugh got actively involved in designing some new decks (with the clever golf ball bearing and such) and ever since then, these have been distributed by Mike Pranka in St. Louis, who is also the importer of Dynavector. A fine person and really solid distributor.
That's a brief and sorta accurate (no footnotes! could be errors in here!) overview of Well Tempered from 1980s to end of 90s. I had no contact with the new WT Lab, just have admired it from seeing Mike Pranka's website. (Mike also races a vintage Alfa GTV by the way.)
