ELP Laser Turntable & Trickle Down

There's quite a bit of "information" if you will (almost entirely anecdotal) at Arthur Salvatore's website, including the big blowup with the then current distributor, Smart Devices, who nixed their relationship with the line and issued warnings about the nature of the dealings of the ELP's parent company. Also, servicing requires shipment back to Japan.

I also vaguely remember a couple of comments made about the table by Pearson and someone else at AS. In a nutshell, they said that the table sounded extremely rolled off in the treble. In fact, I don't recall a full review ever appearing.

On the other hand, I have a friend in the industry who bought one about a year ago and was all fired up about it at the time. I need to call him and see what he thinks about it now that he's had the time to settle in with it.

I don't know who the new US distributor ended up being.

I ran my CBS Labs STR130 test record through my ELP and checked it in Sound Forge, which admittedly involved the preamp and the sound card, but doing that it was pretty much flat out to 20k. Within a db or 2 at most.

I must say Acresverde, that I have never heard any rolled off treble with the ELP. I must say, however, that I know the circumstances surrounding the concerns of SMART. I suspect that the waters are now so tainted that no one will be the US distributor. The company now seems happy to sell directly.

I owned an ELP for a couple years and corresponded much with Mr. Chiba, President of ELP. The laser turntable is a very complicated device with 5 lasers, optical read heads, and high speed servos. He told me there are only a couple companies on the planet who can make these items.

Donald North

I spoke to the friend yesterday who owns the ELP I have alluded to earlier and asked him for his evaluation thus far. He said, and this is almost verbatim, that the table is a "...god hifi table but does not compare to a high quality audiophile conventional unit...". He believes the table lacks refinment in both the input and output stages and that he is currently involved in designing an upgraded output stage and is in continual contact with the power(s) that be at ELP Japan and it is being done with their full knowledge and blessing with an eye for incorporating it into production models at a future date. He also said that there is an East coast distributor and West coast distributor, that he couldn't recall the names but that the West coast guy is a brick and mortar store in San Rafael, Ca. He further mentioned that stateside service is eminent through the West coast distributor...good news, indeed.

Finally, let me clarify that the gentleman I'm alluding to is a household name to anyone well versed in the audio game and has been selling a line of products at least nationally, for years now, that are known to help "purify" the audio signal. His US distributor is Laufertek, I believe.