MAG-LEV AUDIO ML1 TURNTABLE
Shut up and take my money! That’s what I was thinking the moment I saw the promotional video of the Mag-Lev Audio ML1 turntable. Why? Because its platter was spinning in midair, levitated several centimetres above the plinth, looking for all the world like an alien spacecraft coming in to land… except that it wasn’t landing, it was hovering in midair, with an ethereal orange glow emanating beneath it. Wow!
The promotional copy accompanying the video made it clear that this was no YouTube trick. Mag-Lev Audio, a company I’d never previously heard of, based in Slovenia—a country about whose exact location I was somewhat vague—had managed to build a turntable with a platter that rotates in midair, so there’s no bearing, no drive motor, no rubber belt… none of the usual paraphernalia associated with supporting and turning a platter.
But it wasn’t the thought of the technical advantages of getting rid of the bearings, drive motors, and shafts that made me want to buy a Mag-Lev Audio ML1 at first sight… it was that the design concept was just so outrageous and that the spinning, levitating platter looked just so cool… what self-respecting vinylholic wouldn’t want to own one?
THE EQUIPMENT
Other than the fact that it has no bearing, no drive belt, no actual drive motor or any of the usual paraphernalia associated with supporting and turning a platter, the Mag-Lev Audio ML1 is a remarkably conventional turntable. It’s about exactly the right size for a conventional turntable, at a bit shorter than 480mm wide, a bit narrower than 360mm deep and a bit shorter than 186mm high.
The Mag-Lev Audio ML1 even has the two conventional speeds—33.33rpm and 45rpm (so not 78rpm then…)—and if you know your tonearms, you will have already realised that it has a totally conventional tonearm: the Model 9cc from Pro-Ject (but not totally conventional, about which more later on). Unlike some companies, Mag-Lev has not tried to hide the fact that it’s using a Pro-Ject tonearm. It not only mentions this in all its literature, including in the Owner’s Manual, but also leaves the Pro-Ject branding on the arm itself. All of this, along with the similarity in the hyphenated names, caused me to wonder whether Mag-Lev Audio’s factory in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, was anywhere near a Pro-Ject factory (which are located in Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia).
It transpires that although Slovenia shares a border with Austria (and also with Italy, Hungary and Croatia, just in case you’re as geographically challenged as I am) all Pro-Ject’s factories are more than 500km away, so the similarity in the names is apparently just co-incidental.
The Pro-Ject 9cc gets its model number from its effective length (9 inches, or 203mm) and its model letters from the fact that both the
