The Michell GyroDec: Steve Job's Favorite turntable
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There’s a now-infamous photo of Steve Jobs from an article covering his legacy around his death that features him sitting next to his Michell GyroDec turntable.
Michell Engineering saw the same and celebrated the irony through an ad, that “the man who possibly did more to promote the spread of digital music throughout the planet owned a GyroDec.” That’s how iconic and fundamental the GyroDec is to past and current record and Hi-Fi culture.
One of the coolest and most aesthetically pleasing turntables of the last century spawned out of the now famed halls of Michell Engineering. Before its 1982 initiation into the world of Hi-Fi super deck stardom, it raised eyebrows by breaking the unspoken rule within the hi-fi community of sleek-looking either black or white, mostly function over form-looking decks like the Linn Sondek LP12 or the Rega Planar 3 being the go-to norm for how a turntable should look.
It was as unconventional at the time as unconventional could get; an exoskeletal deck where the sub-chassis of the deck was outside in full view and wasn’t covered in a Plymouth, one could just pull the spring covers off. But the real beauty of the deck was not simply in its godly design, but in the materials that went into making it. Until the GyroDec, turntables usually came in wooden plinths (the hollowness of the same gives way to better resonation, just like it does with guitars). John Michell threw all of that out of the window and focused on coming up with a design that would propel form over function by introducing a strictly solid acrylic plinth.
Apart from its technical mastery, the sheer aesthetical superiority of the GyroDec pushed it to become the Hi-Fi equivalent of a Lamborghini Countach - built for performance through sheer engineering magic. A cult-like reverence for the deck has grown over the years due to the same where everyone from Roger Waters to Paloma Faith started to regard it as their go-to deck not to mention it being featured in various Hollywood blockbusters. The superior design qualities of the GyroDec are evident in later turntables such as Clearaudio’s Master Reference and Pro-Ject Audio Systems’ Perspective.
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