Peter Kolkman is an engineer with an eye for clean and pure design. When brainstorming a new way to play vinyl Kolkman and his team at Miniot wanted to go completely simple and straightforward. Their design turned into Wheel, a minimal record player. Wheel is running a highly successful campaign on Kickstarter to fund their first production run.
Wheel doesn’t have a conventional needle but instead a linear tonearm that sits beneath the record in the device’s body. The record player function is turned upside down as the stylus points up and takes the information from the vinyl and outputs it as analog signal. A stick on the top of the device controls playback, track skipping, and volume. Playback can also be done vertically, and the campaign video shows Wheel hanging on a wall or sitting on a bookshelf while playing a record.
The base of Wheel is 319 millimeters in diameter and 42.7 millimeters thick. The total weight of the device is 3500 grams. An Audio Technica AT95E cartridge is the heart of Wheel’s linear tonearm and each cartridge is adjusted uniquely to its device. The headphone jack has 750 milliWatt output with 0.265 Ohm impedance and less than 0.00008% distortion. The system is belt drive and expects less than 0.05% Wow and flutter. 33 1/3 and 45 rpm records are compatible with Wheel, and the company says that 78 rpm records will not be an option.
One thing that makes Wheel standout from the large crop of alternative turntables is the fact that everything is analog. The system requires 120-240 Volt to run through a cord, and output is either through left and right channel speaker wire connectors or a headphone jack. This isn’t a digital reading of vinyl to spit out a wireless signal, it feels more dignified and pure.
It’s great to see a continual stream of engineers and product developers creating new ways to listen to music and appreciate vinyl. As a redesign Wheel takes the basic requirements and constraints and imagines them in a visually pleasing new way. Wheel’s Kickstarter campaign ends on March 17 and units are expected to ship in November 2017.