Bang & Olufsen and Saint Lauren Announce Limited, Collaborative, $35,000 Turntable

Last year, I tried the new H100 Bluetooth headphones from Bang & Olufsen, and they were both the best Bluetooth headphones I’ve ever tried and a pair I could never recommend. They sounded as good as the best wired closed-back headphones, with incredible detail and a massive soundstage. They felt unbelievably premium, with beautiful magnetic wheels to adjust volume and noise canceling on each side, but they were also light. I would like them to have marginally stronger noise canceling and fewer Bluetooth glitches; otherwise, they’re perfect. And yet, I could never recommend them because they retail for $1,550, which is an astonishing, absurd amount of money to spend on Bluetooth headphones.Bang & Olufsen have some solid reasoning for the price, though. It wasn’t simply that the headphones were well made but that they were designed to be easily repairable and updatable. A driver could be replaced with a screwdriver in the store, as could the driver, and the firmware could easily be updated over the air, letting them upgrade the Bluetooth standard over time. The promise that Bang & Olufsen made was that, if you bought these headphones, you would comfortably use them for the next decade or so, which isn’t something you can say about most headphones, and they justified that claim by looking at their history of maintaining and restoring their products.Bang & Olufsen Beogram 4000c Saint Laurent Rive Droite Edition by Anthony Vaccarello. Courtesy of Saint Laurent.I give this preamble as this is precisely what this “new” $35,000 turntable is. Despite its longwinded name — the “Bang & Olufsen Beogram 4000c Saint Laurent Rive Droite Edition by Anthony Vaccarello” — these not new turntables. They’re 70s B&O 4000 series turntables that the company has taken in, cased in a beautiful South American ziricote wood case, and updated its cartridges and pre-amps. It’s a classic piece of 70s product design, slightly refreshed to bring it up to the modern day and rendered anew with styling from one of the classiest luxury houses on the market.Bang & Olufsen Beogram 4000c Saint Laurent Rive Droite Edition by Anthony Vaccarello. Courtesy of Saint Laurent.Bang & Olufsen Beogram 4000c Saint Laurent Rive Droite Edition by Anthony Vaccarello. Courtesy of Saint Laurent.Even more so than the headphones, this is not a product I can “recommend.” Not only is the value-for-money proposition insane, but the 10 turntables are sold out, and if you can afford this turntable and would like to buy it, then my endorsement or otherwise wouldn’t factor into your purchasing decision.But, it is interesting to flag in an era of so much disposable tech that quality and good taste is timeless. Yes, this turntable is unnecessarily expensive, but the design and materials are fundamentally the same as when it was released in the 70s, and because they were made excellently then, some minor updates can make them perfectly functional now. Browse eBay, and you can find 4000- and 5000-series turntables in excellent condition for around $1,000; and they look better than almost any modern solution, and a few updates can make them sound as good as them too.Bang & Olufsen Beogram 4000c Saint Laurent Rive Droite Edition by Anthony Vaccarello. Courtesy of Saint Laurent.

Bang & Olufsen and Saint Lauren Announce Limited, Collaborative, $35,000 Turntable

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