We’ve heard of levitating speakers, phone chargers and whiskey tumblers. Sort of cool.
Let’s float a better idea: Levitating turntable. That’s design magic.
And about to be real. From MAG-LEV Audio, a Slovenian company (with help from the design studio Desnahemisfera, which helped out on the GOAT mug), the First Levitating Turntable uses magnetic levitation to float its record platter while your record (which is most definitely the new Radiohead) is playing.
The floating tech isn’t new — the balance and support required to play a record in mid-air, however, is.
Overall, the MAG-LEV is a fairly minimalist but sleek player with the usual bells and whistles — a cueing mechanism, a forearm that automatically lifts when a record ends, a dial to switch between 33 1/3 and 45 RPM records — along with orange lighting underneath the platter that emphasizes the “wow” factor of a floating record.
When not in use, four small feet rise up and “rest” the platter. And while you may need to worry about knocking the floating unit over, power isn’t an issue: during a sudden outage, the unit has enough stored power to lift the tonearm, stop the record and lift up the platter feet.
Check it out:
MAG-LEV’s unit is currently available on Kickstarter for $780, which shipping in August 2017.
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