A groove is embossed on the inside of a slightly soft metal ring at 1,000 apparent grooves per inch and the needle is directed by a feedscrew (as the groove is so shallow). The groove is recorded hill and dale (vertically) while the stereo difference signal is recorded laterally (side to side). The needle is short and is in a lever system which amplifies the vibrations so that it is loud enough to use listening tubes (remember those? On the original Edison phonograph??). The ring can have any design on the outside because three drive wheels rotate the ring on the inside clockwise when viewed so that the title is upside-right. The radius of the needle is 1/5 of that of an LP to get near-hi-fi sound at 40 RPM. Every Ring Phonograph is capable of recording acoustically on blank rings with a minature stereo horn that comes with it. The spring is about the size of that in a music box (key wound) and the phonograph might be 4" x 5" x 2" in size. The reproducers will have a plastic membrane and will be on the bottom through a lightweight metal linkage. If you take off the listening tubes you will have a low power acoustic phonograph. Sell this with recordings from Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen.
-- Amishman35, Dec 01 2003

Compact Tubes http://www.halfbake...dea/Compact_20Tubes
related idea by [TheoH] [krelnik, Oct 04 2004]

But why? (And "because we can" is not necessarily what I am looking for here.)
-- DrCurry, Dec 01 2003


I'm sure we've done exactly this before, even down to the Lord of the Rings gimick...

As it is, I'm not sure that this one's really different enough from TheoH's idea to escape redundancy - the marketing idea here really belongs there as an annotation... feedback, anyone?
-- yamahito, Dec 01 2003


I tend to agree, though I feel compelled to point out that the other idea is digitally encoded and this idea is an old-style analog phonograph.
-- krelnik, Dec 01 2003


...and me. Bun!
-- silverstormer, Dec 01 2003



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