Charles Altmann is a Danish tinkerer who began this project with his interest in building an affordable home-made tonearm for his turntable. With its completion and dizzying low cost (~5$) he embarked on a project to create a complete turntable from scratch for his garage utilizing his electrical engineering skills and love of motorcycles.

This is his approach to a naturally toned well balanced audiophile turntable for the least possible price (as low as 50$). The turntable is made of two blocks, the motor being independent of the platter/tonearm so as not to create extra noise, driven by a length of looped thread. The platter itself rotates on a Shovelhead intake valve seated in its guide on a ball bearing.

The motor chosen for the project is controlled by generating tones on a computer, playing them through a stereo amplifier to the coils of the motor. In this manner the turntable can be dialed in exactly to the speed necessary for playback (33 1/3, 45, 78) by adjusting the generated waves and using a strobe mat to lock in speed.

It may not be as apparent as a piece of responsive art but I argue its a functional sculptural object whose locomotion is controlled solely by the operator’s input.