Each year at the Munich High End show (Europe’s leading hifi exposition), LP magazine feature a readers’ home built turntable. This year they brought this. It features a tone arm that floats in water, a Rube Goldberg nylon thread drive system and barriers to protect the mechanism from unwanted air movement.

This is a truly beautiful homemade turntable by Joseph Levy of the Vinyl Tourist record collector site. We don;t have exact specs. for it, except to say that it looks like it was made with enough passion that it presumably is as good as it looks.

At $150,000 this is claimed to be the world’s most expensive turntable. It is included here since the price makes it stand out. Our problem with it is that it crosses the fine line between being a celebration of engineering and being crass and ostentatious.

The Clear Audio Reference Turntable is an engineering marvel, with three separate motors and a precision engineered parallel tracking tonearm.

The French are romantics by nature. Verdiers description of his rumble free platter which floats on an oil bath with constant pressure maintained by a pump, is an absolute classic:

“At breakfast, when you butter your toast, if the butter is at the right temperature, your knife lays the butter on the toast, gliding voluptuously without ever touching the bread. In a similar way, at the top of the axis of the “new turntable”, two blades making a 120 degree angle, spread the oil on the superior stop, maintaining a thick lubricating bath on which the whole weight of the turntable can rest.”

The Gavia turntable cost upwards of $5000 and is an older design comprising and aluminum/Teflon composite platter and, unusually, mounting for 2 separate tonearms.

This is a $40,000 turntable that weighs as much as Paris Hilton and has a lot less disturbance. It requires watch oil for lubrication and is manufactured by the Scale Model Equipment company, which is known for also manufacturing aircraft components.

The La Luce turnatable is made by one of the few women turntable makers, Judith Spotheim-Koreneeff. Spotheim is an Israeli designer, based out of the Netherlands. Don't let the kitsch website put you off, these are the real deal.

This is a 20 year old classic turntable made by John Michell and displays a finesse not usually found in mid-range models. they can be picked up for less than $1000, second hand, although only a handful appear on the market each year. More details after the link below.

Although superseded by the SE2, the SE1 is a classic turntable, designed to last as long as the eternal clock built by the long now foundation. Empires may crumble and fall and all thats left will be objects like this.

This turntable/tonearm package costs around $10,000 and was winner of the Absolute Sound 2007 “Golden Ear Award”.

This is the second Clear Audio turntable in our chart, and is our personal favorite, combining the sophistication of audiophile turntables with an understated minimalist design.

Reading the forst sentence from the website for this turntable and you know that you are in the safe hands of a true obsessive audiophile:

“The platter is anti-corodal 12 kg. The shaft is not inverted, the diameter is 20 mm, long140 mm, chrome plating 2/10 thick, diamond polished, synthesized bronze bearings, lithium grease lubrication, opposed balls(replaceable) as thrust surfaces”.

This turntable was winner of Stereo Times’ “most wanted component of the year Award 2004”. Read the reviews listed at the link below and you will realize that there is not much difference in the use of adjectives amongst wine critics and hi-fi reviewers.

This is a rather unflattering photo of the Canadian manufacturer’s latest version of its celebrated Delphi turntable.