Vertical Record Players are Here; the Future of Vinyl?

Image courtesy of Byronv2 via Flickr

Record players have been around for a long time, they’re one of the first formats on which we could listen to music easily in the comfort of our own homes, and the format has never totally died, in fact in recent years vinyl has enjoyed a revival, and sales have grown by hundreds of percent.

This has seen companies trying to create the best record players for the job, and to reignite peoples love of records, now one company has launched a vertical record player, bringing the retro music player right into the 21st century.

Pretty simple, you might think, but of course the way a record player works relies on gravity! The needle is dropped, and the record spins at a steady rate, but the design has had to be a little more clever for the vertical model, which is made by Roy Harpaz and has been named the ‘toc’. 12, 10 and 7 inch vinyl all work on the model, which has also been released with some cool photos of the inner workings which allow you to see what drives it.

In terms of the look, it goes well in modern or classic houses with a wooden outer shell encasing the mechanics. It’s futuristic looking, after all, it is a totally new design, which we’ve certainly never seen before. Does it actually serve any purpose? Well besides looking cool and providing a talking point for your house guests, it can be a bit of a space saver, taking up less surface area than traditional, and even the more modern record players.

How does it sound? Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing yet as only the photographs of the product have been released, but we can’t wait to get our hands on one and test out the way it sounds, with some concerns being raised about whether the design may lend itself to scratching. The vertical design of course has nothing to do with the sound and is purely for style. Speaking of style, the control panel on the side is simple, and the LCDs show that this is a more modern product with a lot of features hidden behind a minimal look.

With loads of big companies trying to release the top record players, and more and more entering the market all the time, you can’t blame the toc for trying to be unique, and it offers everything you could look for in terms of looks, design and even functionality, with our one small criticism from the start being that the controls are at the back, which could be an issue if you want to use them during playback. Of course the proof is in the pudding, and we will only be able to truly see what this has to offer when the reviews surface and it becomes widely available, for now, even a youtube video would help people to make their mind up about what is undeniably, a very cool, smart and futuristic design, will it start a vinyl revolution?