My weird but awesome Michell Focus One

I’ve been tearing apart an old iMac G3 today trying to get it working, and needed to rifle through all my old hard disks to find something that would fit it, needed to be sub 128gb and ata.  Found an ancient 80gb drive which would be perfect.

Anyhoo, before formatting I checked it out, and found a plethora of old interesting stuff, including the XML logs from my first ever MSN chats with my fiancé.  Shan't bore you with the personal stuff, but found these shots I took in 2007 to eBay my old Michell Focus One.  In 2003, my Mum gave me a call and said a work colleague was leaving for Australia and selling all his possessions, and he had a nice working turntable for sale for £50.  I had a really nice Bang and Olufsen Beolab something or other I had picked up for chips, but the cartridge was worn and was a proprietary type that cost £120.  So I said sure, without even asking too many questions about it.  Being honest, I hadn't really heard of Michell at the time, only anecdotally that they made bits for 2001 films.

When I got back to Bristol from Uni I had a EDITED moment when I finally saw it, it was beautiful!  Wow it was beautiful.  Upon googling it I couldn't find another like it, and still to this date I have never seen another pic of a Focus in this configuration.  I eventually sold it in 2007 when I upgraded to a Project RPM 9 with a Goldring Elite cart.  The Focus had a Linn Basik LV V tone arm, and an A&R P77 cart.

It sold for £350, 700% profit! (If it was worth more, please don’t tell me, ignorance is bliss ) I do miss how great it looked, but the Project wiped the floor with it for SQ.  

Here are some pics, if anyone has seen one like it or know where the platter comes from, I would like to know!