Music

Gaze in awe at this insane vertical turntable

by Richard Howard

Vinyl junkies are some of the most passionate people around. They’ll do anything to get their hands on a rare record and travel across the country to procure a high-end old-school record player. However it’s not all about the vintage stuff – if it looks and sounds great, new technology will get a vinyl aficionado salivating uncontrollably as well.

Case in point: The Floating Record Vertical Turntable. On Wednesday morning, its makers Gramovox posted a Kickstarter fundraiser that aspired to hit a target of $50,000 in 33 days. Things are looking pretty promising… considering by mid-afternoon they had raised over $240,000.

While feedback on the prototype’s sound and its feature list certainly seem to place it among higher mid-range players, the aspect that has no doubt endeared it to non-audiophiles is its design. The name says it all — this sweet-ass player actually holds your records vertically as it plays them, allowing you to gaze lovingly at your spinning blood-splatter design Django Unchained soundtrack while pretending to listen to your roommate.

In addition to this absolute mind-fuck of structural design, its aesthetics on a whole are pretty next-level. A professionally crafted maple or walnut woodbase with built in speakers, polished acrylic platter and carbon-fibre tone-arm make for a striking yet understated piece of functional art — perfect for nonchalantly replying “Oh, that old thing?” to your guests’ freak-outs on seeing it. These are the same guys that created the sort of ridiculous but somehow at the same time awesome Bluetooth Gramophone — but they’ve really outdone themselves this time.

Now excuse me while I definitely don’t put a $330 dent into my credit card balance.