[luv-talk] Playing LP's with a laser pickup ?

Assembled cognoscenti; I was recently discussing the depressing fact that playing vinyl LP's with even the lightest 'needle-head' seemed to involved wearing out the signal. The sound guy I was talking to seemed to recall some experimentation with an interferometric laser surface gauge; and I (wrongly as it turned out) was under the impression that a commercial product, existed but it cost > $100K. A bit of googling has turned up: http://www.elpj.com/ at about $15K to $20K; anyone ever had any experience with such things ? - I should emphasise this is just idle curiosity as I have nether the money, or the LP's to play on such a device ! regards Rohan McLeod