I have one. And I love it.
Mine is the hi-res version.
In April last year, I took a trip to Japan - solely to listen to the ELP Laser Turntable - before deciding to purchase it.
Upon ordering, it took 4 months to deliver.
As with a lot of equipment, after living with them for a number of months, and once you get the hang of it, you start to discover little peculities about them, and learnt how to rein them in for better sound.
One example - a newly cleaned (washed and vacuumed) LP will progressively sound better after a few more spins on the ELP.
And the noise blanker function needs to be deactivated to let the full spectrum and dynamics shine through.
The sonic difference is very very drastic.
This function is set to ON, by default (and intentionally omitted from the manual)
But with a filter that's set to kick in so early in the middle of the audible freq spectrum, it is bound to affect the music reproduction somewhat.
After incessant writing to Chiba San, I managed to squeeze the info out from him.
Right now, the frictionless 'table is singing sweetly through the pass lab ono phonostage and i am getting getting more and more captivated every passing day by its lack of perceivable needle-groove interaction.
how do one begin to describe it?
imagine a brand new LP.
play it once on a conventional needle clad turntable, and immediately play it again.
the 2nd time the LP is played again, it sounds "different".
the tightness in the throat, that squeekiness at the intense crescendos, that sharper-than-real life imaging delineation - all those too familiar artitfacts of needle playback - are now happily made conspicious by their absence is what this ELP thing sounds like.
Perhaps the most important thing is no damage to your precious LPs.
I have a couple of LPs that are valued above 1k in today's market.
One of them is starting to exhibit sonic characteristics of wear towards the end.
But on the ELP, it tracks beautifully with no audible artifacts.