Most turntables ask you to find a shelf, a stand, or a dedicated corner of the room. The Ruka TD-1 asks something different: it hangs on the wall, spinning your records vertically like a piece of kinetic art, and it is now open for pre-order at founder pricing.
A Turntable Built to Hang on the Wall
Ruka Studio, a young hardware brand focused on “designing rituals for your home,” built the TD-1 around a simple idea: a record collection is meant to be seen, not shelved away. A magnetic clamp pulls the LP into position and seats it true, and the whole unit clicks into a lightweight wall bracket, a floor stand, or a tabletop mount — the same deck adapts to wherever it lives. The Ruka TD-1’s body is machined from aluminum rather than wood or plastic, which the brand says keeps it rigid and free of the flex or warping that can affect other materials over time.
Underneath the industrial-design pitch is a real engineering problem: keeping a stylus tracking correctly on a record that is standing up rather than lying flat. Ruka’s answer is an auto-calibrating tracking-force system — owners enter the recommended force for their cartridge, and the TD-1 applies and maintains it automatically, which the brand says keeps tracking within the same safe range vertically as a conventional turntable achieves horizontally. The deck is belt-driven, decoupling the motor’s vibration from the platter, and takes swappable headshells so owners can fit the cartridge of their choice.
Pure Analog or Wireless, Your Choice
The Ruka TD-1 is designed to bridge two very different listening habits. Through its RCA outputs it behaves like a conventional analog deck for a hi-fi system; over Bluetooth, it can stream straight to wireless speakers or headphones without a receiver in between. Power comes over USB-C, and there is no companion app or touchscreen — Ruka has kept control mechanical, with physical knobs and switches. There is a video demo of the belt-drive mechanism on the brand’s own product page for anyone who wants to see the vertical clamp and self-leveling mount in action before ordering.
Pricing and availability
The Ruka TD-1 is open for pre-order at a founder price of $1,399, secured with a fully refundable $100 deposit; the balance is only collected once a unit is ready to ship. Ruka is limiting this first run to 500 units, and pre-order customers are first in line, with units expected to ship in 2027 and a free matching record stand included. A separate “Reserve” option lets buyers lock in the same $1,399 price with a smaller $50 deposit, behind pre-order customers in the queue, while the eventual public price is set at $2,199. Every TD-1 ships with a cartridge already fitted, a wall-mount bracket, a USB-C power cable, and RCA audio cables.
Key specifications
- Vertical, magnetic-attach mounting: wall, floor stand, or tabletop
- Belt-driven platter with auto-calibrating tracking force
- Machined aluminum body
- MM cartridge, swappable via interchangeable headshells
- Wow & flutter: <0.15% RMS
- Speed accuracy: ±0.1%
- Signal-to-noise ratio: ≥75 dB
- Outputs: RCA (wired analog) and Bluetooth (wireless)
- Power: USB-C PD
- Dimensions: 12 in tall x 3 in wide x 1.6 in deep
More information and the current pre-order status are available on Ruka Studio’s own site.
