Manufacturing a tonearm would be an even bigger catastrophe for B&O than making a new table/cartridge. The market for separate arms is exceedingly small, smaller by far than the turntable market. It's also entirely focused on the high end audiophile group, who will, in my experience, never, ever, admit B&O is "high end" and embrace a product from them no matter how good the product is (e.g. the Beolab 5). I've heard audiophiles who on first exposure were blown away by the BL5, who then pontificated that, well, it's OK, but it'd be soooo much better if B&O used "real" amps (inefficient class A units of appropriate pedigree) and better drivers, etc.

Vinyl has been commercially dead since the 1980'ties, and still is. 

I'm sure some disagree, and that is fine. But young people (besides the occasional few who see it "hip") do not use vinyl. They're glued to their iPhones. 

Mark wrote:

vinyl record sales are on another high for 2015 and up by 56% and the biggest number of sales since 1994....

 

 

Right, but using the height of vinyl, when B&O were still producing TTs (and I mean seriously producing, not the stuff at the end of their turntable run) as a point of comparison, how much market is there realistically now compared to then. I bet it's still exceedingly small. But it could really gain steam soon, too. I'm not saying it can't. 

Vinyl sales could group by an order of magnitude and still be a drop in the bucket compared with downloads and streaming. While I appreciate vinyl, and tube amps, for their retro-ness, it will never again be a significant market. Consider also the two main groups ov vinylphiles...hipster kids who can't or won't dump large amounts of money on a table, and hard core audiophiles who will never be Beogram customers due to their distain for B&O and their inability to use any cartridge, clamp, or whatever tweak is hot on a closed ecosystem like a Beogram. Personally I like my Beogram 3000/MMC2 combo a lot but I'm not a traditional audiophile anymore. 

I would buy one if it had the same or better performance as an equivalent from a rival at its price point - Islington B&O have a Project 2 Experience deck next to a Moment and a small tube pre amp in between - it looks fantastic - the deck and amp cost around £1000 - that would be the problem for B&O I suspect. Other manufacturers are making decks that can stream to wireless systems, so I suspect Vinyl isn't dead in the same way that Polaroid cameras are making a come back with the film being manufactured somewhere in Europe. Even old brick phones are starting to appear as trendy again. The old technologies are never going to take over from the new, but they are gaining popularity as people crave more simple ways of doing things and not having to sign up or give out details to use electronic services.

A poll is a good idea.

I would buy one if it had the same or better performance as an equivalent from a rival at its price point - Islington B&O have a Project 2 Experience deck next to a Moment and a small tube pre amp in between - it looks fantastic - the deck and amp cost around £1000 - that would be the problem for B&O I suspect. Other manufacturers are making decks that can stream to wireless systems, so I suspect Vinyl isn't dead in the same way that Polaroid cameras are making a come back with the film being manufactured somewhere in Europe. Even old brick phones are starting to appear as trendy again. The old technologies are never going to take over from the new, but they are gaining popularity as people crave more simple ways of doing things and not having to sign up or give out details to use electronic services.

A poll is a good idea.