Seriously?

What if they reversed the polarity? That usually fixes things.

 

The engineer in me is annoyed. Not because I think this is dumb, but because they took a neat idea and fell very short. I see a complete lack of control system on anything other than the rotational axis. Nothing on vertical displacement nor tilt. All spring systems (and that's all this is) need damping components for stability, otherwise you get oscillation/harmonic motion. Heck, since we're playing with magnets you can probably rig up a high school physics experiment for Lenz's Law and slap a conductive element on the platter edge with a magnet on the side opposite the cartridge and get your damping in that way. Maybe.

Or drop the floating distance by an order of magnitude (you lose some of the "cool factor" though) and use a smarter arrangement of magnets to both attract and repel in stronger tighter fields, letting you "lock" in place and achieve some measure of passive vertical damping that way.

Bleh, personally I'd just stick with a regular turntable and put it on a butcher block and levitate the whole thing if I really wanted isolation that way.

edit: oh look, cheap levitating platforms on aliexpress for $70 each; get one for each foot of your turntable and you're done.

 

But but..., what happens when you are transported to the past and the flux capacitor is exhausted? Wait, I'm sure there is a decrapifier, for another 10k which will prevent such an event from ever occurring.

 

RIght! Brundle-fly to the rescue!!

 

Troels seems to think there's some merit to the basic idea

http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/maglev.htm

 

This product immediately made me think of magnetically suspended spindle bearings. I remember these showing up from time to time over the years. I could not remember who put them out. This little thread mentions some companies that did.

http://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=2471.0

 

Check out how the discmaster does it: http://www.hugohein.eu/links/ear/disc master pics.htm

 

I was just about to post the same thing. He compares it very favorably to his modded Lenco, which is a relatively high bar, and of course it being Troels Gravesen gives the project a whole bunch of authenticity. The platter bearing is simply a magnetically suspended shaft as Dino describes above, so not much of a 'gee whiz' factor relative to the Kickstarter project, but then again it actually works. So there's that.

Price for the motor/platter is about $850.00, so depending on your plinth building skills/materials, somewhere around 1k gets you a pretty cool deck with a low voltage, regulated motor and a high mass platter with the magnetic bearing thingy as a bonus(?). Sans arm of course, but Troels certainly thinks it's worth a couple of pretty nice arms! Anyone tempted?

 

Yeah, and for a relatively modest price. Considering the new VPI Scout costs 2200.00 (w/the newest JMW 9 iteration), and frankly requires a motor controller for that Hurst AC motor to achieve a high level sonic footprint, you can buy the motor assembly and platter, a used, very good arm for 1k' and presumably put together a very high level analog player for less-to-much-less money than a practically entry level VPI. Caveats: TT components sourced from China (initial quality, service if something goes wrong), trusting Troel's ear, DIY ability (or the additional cost of paying someone to build a plinth), limited resale ability (unlike the aforementioned VPI).

This all just idle thought-processing btw, nothing serious, though you never know!