🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <72811@cup.portal.com> Chris_F_Chiesa@cup.portal.com writes:
>By now we all (hopefully) know that lasers are used to read signals from
>CDs and videodiscs, but last weekend while visiting friends over Christmas
>I heard of a new application for the same (or similar) technology: reading
>good ol' vinyl records by contactless laser pickup.  Has anyone here heard
>of this, and can anyone provide any details on HOW it is being done?  This
>is one of those ideas that, to me, seems obvious in retrospect, and "it's
>a wonder nobody thought of it sooner."

You are thinking of the Finial laser turntable.  It was really a bad idea,
since any little imperfection in the groove wall would show up as a tick
or a pop.  While it did do a very good job of playing back records in 
good shape, it would bring out a lot more surface noise than conventional
playback, and it had great difficulties tracking warped recordings, or
records with an off-center hole.  Finial sold about twenty of the machines
at $15,000 each, before going bankrupt.

There is a small Japanese company which has taken over the design, and is
making the laser turntables on a one-off basis for archivists.  They are
significantly more than $15,000, and except for being able to salvage certain
types of damage, they don't do half as good a job as a conventional pickup.

Save your money and buy a Benz-Micro cartridge and an SME arm instead.
That'll put you back a few thousand bucks less and you might even have
enough left over for a nice turntable.
--scott