Yamaha PX-1

October   1 9 7 7 october 1977
1 9 8 0 1980

A big big LP turntable which was unfortunately very discreetely available and badly photographed in Yamaha's catalogs and never with its external power-supply - 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 first samples were ready by october 1977, almost a year before the actual launch.

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 + 5kg for the power-supply.
Optionally available were two arm pipes with integrated or separate headshell.

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 there were at least 1836 made.

The PX-1 sold very poorly : at 585,000¥ (480,000¥ later on) Yamaha couldn't really push its sales. But its later, smaller, siblings sold very well : PX-2 and PX-3.

A real PX-1 here ; the integrated shell here, the separable here.

Yamaha PX-1, image 1 Yamaha PX-1, image 2 Yamaha PX-1, image 3
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