Linear tracking turntables, whatever happened?

Yes I’m thinking it’s degraded searched eBay for parts but I have no other leads yet. Ty 

Right near the end of the TT era before CD's took over the Japanese made some very nice high end LT tables. I have several, a Technics SL-M3, a Yamaha PX-3 and a Pioneer PL-L1000. My favorite is the Technics SL-M3. Super specs for wow and flutter and it's really cool to watch the arm tracking in operation. It's true that the arm has to go off center a tiny amount before the drive pulls it back in line again. There is a feed motion on the arm about once per revolution so since the grooves are about 0.003 to 0.004 of an inch apart it is never more that that far from being perpendicular from the groove. I don't think anything tracks that close and since the arm pivots it never loads the cantilever. Think about that, the stylus moves 0.003 of an inch towards the center and the tone arm is driven towards the center by a like amount.
These units were very expensive in the day and CDP were taking the world by storm. The three units above were the last hurrah by the Japanese before giving up on TT manufacturing. Find one of these units and have it serviced for years of trouble free operation.
There is nothing inherently wrong with LT TT, they were just introduced to late in the game. Technically they are much better that a swinging tone arm that spends most of it's time way out of alignment.
BillWojo

I did some surfing on the web and the tracking roller is a rubber o ring 3/8  Id 11/32 od  mounted on a  metal wheel  saw a posted picture of it. Mine has turned to mush so with some patience and luck and great advice from audio gear heads I will fix. It  thx 

thastum

If the record already have had a life on a radial tonearm you can actually hear it.

thastum

Well, sir, you have managed in one sentence to summarize why I and many others still use linear tracking as the preferred way to play our records. Unfortunately your statement will go "over the head" of those on this thread (the Cons) who did not "walk the walk",  and do the comparison in their own room if they own a resolving system.

The key words being "did not" - IMO, they have more chance in todays world of going all digital today than record playing "linear". 

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I had an interesting experience some years ago. A prominent Audiogon member sent me a Cd, yes a CD remember those ?
It was a recording using a specific cartridge. I then played that same music, using the same cartridge in my system with the linear tracker. The presentation was with the linear tracker very different, more realistic;  it lacked the "music borders" that Frogman mentioned on this thread in describing the pivot arm. Now understand there was nothing wrong at all with the presentation of music using the pivot arm presentation. The first time I heard it... it sounded very good. And if I had not heard the linear tracker version, I would have been fine with it.
But I had....

And that is the reason there is a pump and airline.  

I may experiment with a linear tracker at some stage but it will NOT be with pump and airline et al.

Quite a few other options from what I have learned from this thread which I am very glad I started as it has opened my eyes to a lot of ideas and information.
Thank you all for that so far.