Goldmund Meta Laser One Transport


I've got a line on a Goldmund Meta Research Laser One Transport for about 500.00. There is just nothing out there on this piece of equipment. Anyone have or ever had one. Likes / dislikes? It will go with a Theta Pro Prime II DAC and a pair of Soliloquy 6.2i speakers. Not sure which integrated I will hook it up to yet. Will it matter?
amdb9
Long time ago... The Meta transport was a very good machine. Easily among the best transports made.

It was manufactured by Micromega (and looked like one, too). It uses a Philips cd9 pro mechanism which has been out of print so to speak for ages.
SO, is this one is pristine condition, very low mileage? Alternatively, do you get a spare transport mechanism -- or have access to any NOS?
i had one for about 2 days before i returned it. admittedly it was traded-in to a local dealer. but it was very "sensitive" from what i remember and skipped among other things. it is true however that at the time it was a top-rated transport.
as an aside, i already had the matching META-RESEARCH DAC which i bought new- IT would not sit flat on a shelf (no, the legs all matched!) so i got another one, but it died from power outages and brown-outs. i sent it back for repairs to make it immune to bad power. now the good news- it sounded absolutely amazing and i kept it for several years before finally upgrading to a levinson 360S (which was more dynamic and had better bass and better staging). but it held its own for a very long time; it just had "quirks" as described above.
so the bottom line is that you need to be able to return it if it has any hiccups or acts funny. one more thing- i also purchased the goldmund sp-dif cable which was considered one of the best digital cables on the market back in the day. my guess is that it would work very well with this particular transport.
Also owned this unit, long, ago..very decent for its time..I performed a modification to the lid setup, as to allow unit to play disc w/ lid open if desired. This made CD changes a breeze. This units responded to a common phillip remote code of its day & often was influenced by similar phillip products in vacinity, namely my marantz products. As previously mentioned, refer to Micromega for a wealth of info.
I had one of these units for 10 years up until last year. I "sold" it to a man in Russia and it turned out he had falsified a PayPal payment. Bad experience.

For $500 it's a steal. I believe it's worth around $1200. I also used mine with a Theta DAC and it was a great combination. I had a problem once, and it went back to Switzerland for repair and upgrade. Aside from that problem (probably a lightning strike) it was an excellent machine that served me well and sounded very good. Goldmund is top shelf gear. I'd snap it up while you have the chance.