Did i hear correctly, VPI may introduce a direct drive at the upcoming CES and it will be a flagship model?
That would be interesting if true. VPI in my opinion has been all over the map with their designs over the years. They went from inboard motors to outboard motors. From outboard motors to rim drive and back to inboard motors. I have owned two VPI tables. The first was a Scout that I bought brand new. The second was an older TNT table. The first thing VPI told me to do was to remove the two spindles from the TNT and they sent me plugs that snapped into the plinth to cover the holes. It seems that VPI discovered that the two extra spindles that were originally designed to remove the effects of side-loading the platter were causing more harm than good by introducing noise into the system. I have owned two VPI arms, the original JMW 9 that was on the Scout and the JMW 10 that came with my TNT. I was never a fan of either arm and replaced the JMW 10 arm on my TNT with an ET-2 which was a great combo.
I wonder where people are getting their direct drive motors and electronics from now? Are they really designing and building their own or are they coming from someone like Technics?
While I understand what you're saying, you also have to look at what HW was trying to do at a given price point. The new table is cost-no-object, something HW fought doing for years, and probably will be around $30K. But from what I've heard, there's some magic lurking inside the best dd tables.
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