The workshop
Made for the long play
How VOLT/AUDIO makes the Ash Turntable, one piece at a time, and why it takes longer than it has to.
Words by Lena Kraus · Photos by Jon Ash
Afternoon light in the listening room.
The Ash Turntable started with a single question: what if a record player were built like a piece of furniture you keep for thirty years? We answered it with a plinth of solid European ash, cut from one board so the grain runs unbroken from corner to corner, and finished by hand with natural oil that deepens a little every year.
The workshop sits at the end of a gravel road, in a building that used to be a dairy. There is no sign on the door. Inside, it smells of wood oil and coffee, and the radio plays quietly while six people do one thing at a time, carefully.
Slow by design
Every piece is made in small batches. Materials are chosen by hand and left to rest before they are worked; parts are fitted, checked and fitted again. It is not the fastest way to make anything, and that is exactly the point.
We could make it faster. We just don’t want to.
VOLT/AUDIO, founder
Look closely and you see the decisions: an edge rounded just enough to feel soft in the hand, a joint you can only find with your fingertips, a finish that will look better in ten years than it does today.
Built to stay
Put on a record, lift the lid and leave your phone in the other room. Twenty minutes per side was never too long.
When a piece leaves the workshop it carries a small card, signed by the person who finished it. It is a promise, really: that it was made to be used every day, and to be repaired rather than replaced.
