The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

price wise out of reach, but interesting step. Writer goes very retro "the ELP Laser Turntable plays all your favorite records without having the need to actually touch the wax!"

http://www.magic925.com/rdub/new-laser- ... hing-them/

Variations of this have been around for quite a while, probably 15-20 years at this point. When they first became available, the sellers also sold you a special record cleaning unit because even the slightest dust on the record caused a significant audio spike. I imagine they've worked that out by now.

I can also pretty much guarantee these don't work on vertical cut records.

They don't work on colored vinyl either

Laser turntables have been around for 25 or so years now. ELP has been making them for a number of years. They haven't significantly come down in price and they haven't really improved that much. If this new ELP is just a re-boxed version with some minor tweaks to it, it's probably nothing to be that excited about.


Optical imaging to "play back' the grooves of old recording media is by far the more promising technology be developed right now, IMO.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2014/0 ... story.html

It's the usual ELP we know of, just in a new fancy case to better correspond with its price. The old black plastic look was anything but appealing.

And yes, possibly with some minor updates but likely still most of its issues. Some two years ago I could actually hear the ELP at a local shop in person through good speakers for two full LP sides.

The overall quality was very impressive. The usual minor distortion or slight loss of high frequency towards the end was fully absent. Analog audiophiles may not like this term, but it was very much CD-like - except ... for the numerous clicks that came through. The records were cleaned before on a VPI and put into the ELP tray right aftwards.

So, this may be always an issue. And the clicks were quite a lot, much more than an average record would do with a needle.

Another issue with the ELP is, that they sometimes loose tracking out of nowhere. So, in the middle of the record, the laser beams suddenly will jump a few grooves ahead. Also, I am not a big fan of belt drives in general.

Nevertheless, I'd really like to hear what a 1920's Columbia 78rpm would play on one of these. Unfortunately the ELP I heard was the Classic model without 78rpm capability. Anyway, still a highly interesting principle.

I completely agree, that optical imaging is more promising. The only problem is the even several times more higher price that a mortal person is not able to effort. A friend of mine once inquired at Berkely Laboratory for digitizing a piece of recorded 1870's tinfoil. If I recall it correctly, their price quote was anything between $8000 to $12.000, looks like, lots of interesting recordings will have to remain unplayed for yet another while...

I remember hearing of someone using a Packburn Noise Suppressor with their laser turntable - as what was considered a necessary accoutrement.

And those records have to be squeaky clean whenever you play them. Some specks of dust get on them and the ball game's over. You get noise of a worse, more intrusive sort than how they would be tracked by a stylus.

One thing I like about laser machines and their potential for 78 rpm is that you can train the laser to read the less worn part of the groove. And no mucking around with finding the right stylus size/shape. But a 78 with embedded dirt or needle debris would probably sound awful.

Another thing I recall about laser machines - at least in the old days - was that they had to be shipped back to Japan periodically, with no small shipping charge to have the laser(s) recalibrated.