>The decades-old turntables were first taken apart, inspected and thoroughly cleaned before being reassembled.
Being almost 50 year old turntables I would think the two most significant issues that would have to be addressed would be the deterioration of rubber/plastic compounds and lubricants.
A large majority of speakers, after some decades, suffer from foam-rot. The surrounds quite literally disintegrate into dust. Likewise, the rubber dampers inside the phone cartridge have probably stiffened-up, thus preventing the stylus from moving freely.
Even worse, all three of my reel-to-reel tape decks are frozen due to the fact that the lubricant has turned into glue. The decks would have to be completely disassembled, cleaned with a solvent, re-lubricated, re-assembled and re-calibrated.
The mechanical parts in these turntables are also quire small, so much so that we are getting in to watchmaker territory. My guess is that a large chunk of that $11K price tag is going to pay the wages of the skilled craftsmen who are working on these machines.
On a bit of a tangent, somebody mentioned optical/laser turntables. ELP has been around for some forty years and sells in the $20k price range...
I myself came up with the idea of optically scanning the record groves, converting the scans into a 3D STL file and then using curve-fitting and in-filling to create a model of a pristine model of the grove that could then be played with digital audio software.
Turns out it’s been thought of, although the idea of 3D modeling is, as far as I know, original. For more information...
Had that same idea myself as a young empty headed engineer...................