At first, Thank you all for your attention - a truly appreciate it.

Several months ago I had posted a picture of one my earlier players which had a shorter mandrel and required an end gate because of the relatively soft PVC base plate. That's why no. 3 required a end support of the mandrel:
Another one that is predating the one above is deposited at a friend's house in New Jersey to be used when I am there. And this is simply for backup purposes now in case something should happen to my latest one. These early developments worked OK but required a good portion of attention such as repositioning of the pulleys after every few transfers, and re-calibrating of the playback speed which changed when one pulleys had moved while being steady during playback. All these problems are now history - gladly!
The basic design has not changed much but several necessary details were implemented over the whole generation of four players.
The machine is completely custom made and was realized by Matthias Menz who is a good friend of mine. We discussed certain designs over countless hours and this is what came out of it. The cost of material and the manufacture of the custom parts was not very cheap and did cost several hundred Euros actually. But therefore, it is has a industrial quality. We are currently thinking of issuing a very small series of a player like this one, maybe with a few changes again.
My Nikon makes brilliant pictures but no videos and I will have to borrow one. I hope to make a little video over the weekend and will post it then ASAP.
Btw. I never seriously digitized any cylinder by using a microphone. Before that I used one of the ACT reproducers that Peter Liebert and Rob Lomas used to sell. They worked (and do work) pretty well but the spring motor was always the bottle neck of quality.
The tracking of wobbling Blue Amberols does work very well and sometimes surprises me too. I have one that is badly out of round but tracks perfectly on the player at full speed.
There will be soon a more detailed description on Christer Hamp's Phonograph Makers' Pages, hopefully by tomorrow. I will post a link as soon as it is ready.