PX-1
(1978 - 1980)

A big big LP turntbale which was unfortunately very discreetely available and badly photographed in Yamaha's catalogs (and never with its external power-supply) - it seems Mr Nisi, audio-heritage and I have the same catalog and that none other is to be found... Even more drastic than Onkyo's PX-100M !

The PX-1 is to Yamaha what the contemporary PS-B80 was to Sony - everything automatic, resonances electronically damped and tonearm electronically controlled.
Yamaha gathered a team under the guidance of Mr Mochida to develop the tangential tonearm although it is likely the PX-1 was actually built by Micro Seiki. The PX-1 sold very poorly (and Yamaha didn't try to push its sales) but its later, somewhat smaller, siblings sold extremely well: PX-2 and PX-3. The same is true of Sony's PS-X800 which sold very well and remains, to this day, with Yamaha's PX-2, the ultimate, affordable, reliable and truly excellent tangential turntable.

Low-friction tonearm (5mg), a lot of electronics ready to go haywire, 5,6kg duralumin platter, OFC wiring, rubber-encased 20-pole DC motor, 5mm thick acrylic dustcover (!), ± 6% pitch controls (top left), shuttle arm drive - and then some... 27kg plus 5kg for the power-supply. A super-futuristic piece of high-end audio with a sadly boring black finish - more of an engineering feat in 1978 than anything else - the later GT-2000 would prove a bestseller and it didn't have much electronics inside ! Production run is anybody's guess but probably around 100 or 200 units ; surviving PX-1s must be very very few.

You can see another image of the PX-1 in the Miscelleanous section of TVK and how it fared compared to other big direct-drive turntables in this other TVK page.