Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime

Posted by texanater (A) on October 3, 2015 at 07:03:21

It may kick off an arms race in your stereo the likes of which the world hasn't seen since the cold war! This table is so wonderful it makes everything else I own seem like crap! I immediately upgraded my amplification and will likely upgrade my phono pre too. Right now I have a DIY boozhound which is great, but probably the weak link now. Any thoughts on a DIY phono pre that would live up to the Prime? I'm thinking of making a PH16. I've sold everything I have to sell now. I have a few odds and ends that are still up for grabs but I basically cleaned out everything but what is in the stereo. I am keeping one phono cart in reserve for the event that I break the one I am using. But other than that it is all gone.

I'm being a little tongue in cheek here with the "warning", but seriously this is a wonderful table. I'm not sure how well recognized I am here, but you may recall a couple months ago I posted a question about the best $3K table. Until now I've enjoyed this hobby buffet style with 3 or more record players at any given time. Well, a recent move made it impossible to have more than one record player installed at a time and I found myself enjoying the simplicity of just having one. I started to think that if I go to just one I am sitting on $3K worth of record players but only listening to $1K. The idea came to me to sell what I have and get the best player I could afford with the money. Many great suggestions were offered but the one that intrigued me the most was the Prime which of course is more than $3K. But in for a penny in for a pound, I sold all I could and bought the Prime!

Now I don't have much experience with $4K record players. So I can't claim this is the best one. All I can claim is I can never go back! I don't regret spending the money. I am not rich, I am solidly middle class. $4K is a lot of money to me.

So how does it sound? It just sounds great! It sounds like my idler drive but with a quieter noise floor. The magic of the idler drive is the explosive dynamics and voices. Sounds just pop into the air effortlessly. This attack and control in my humble opinion is what people refer to as PRaT. The fact that you can clearly hear the instant a voice starts and stops with no ambiguity really reveals the rhythm and timing and interactions of the voices. The idler has all that because it is a fractional horsepower motor directly coupled to a cast aluminum platter spinning on a 1/2" iron bearing. Well this table has all that! Every virtue the idler has this table has better. PLUS it has a $2,600 3D printed tonearm to retrieve every drop of detail in the grooves. The spacial imaging is holographic. The soundstage is deep and lifelike. The voices are clearly articulated and separate. The tonal colors are lush and engaging. Its just great! This isn't an actual metric but I've noticed in some of the better systems I've heard I actually thought I heard sound coming from another room. My stereo now tricks me that way too. I don't know what that is but its fun.

I don't have it on isolation yet. I may not. I don't know that I buy the value of an isolation platform. Most platforms used for isolation are actually very good sound conductors so I'm not convinced of the value. Please make suggestions or let me know where I am wrong.

I've often been an advocate of the Technics 1200 and still am for its price. I never said it was a giant killer. I am really glad I didn't now that I have a giant.
You can't cheat an honest man, never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump -- W.C. Fields

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Topic - Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - texanater 07:03:21 10/03/15 (48)

Congrats from a fellow Prime owner (#22 here!) - Drew769 09:16:01 10/05/15 (0)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - vinyl survivor 16:22:58 10/04/15 (0)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - MannyE 11:58:23 10/04/15 (0)

Another DIY phono stage - reuben 05:35:26 10/04/15 (3)

Probably need further instruction - valvesonly 06:49:42 10/04/15 (0)

RE: Another DIY phono stage - texanater 06:13:54 10/04/15 (1)

RJM PhonoClone 3 - WntrMute2 11:25:49 10/04/15 (0)

phono stage..ning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - mnawaz3@aol.com 05:03:43 10/04/15 (2)

RE: phono stage..ning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - texanater 05:52:37 10/04/15 (1)

sheer audio m88 phono stage..ning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - mnawaz3@aol.com 07:39:17 10/04/15 (0)

RE: Question - ydavid 22:10:58 10/03/15 (1)

RE: Question - texanater 05:58:31 10/04/15 (0)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - hahax@verizon.net 18:54:22 10/03/15 (1)

clever, I wonder how that impacts belt creep - texanater 06:02:09 10/04/15 (0)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - A.Wayne 18:00:34 10/03/15 (0)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - painter27 17:04:05 10/03/15 (0)

Platform! - M3 lover 14:19:57 10/03/15 (1)

RE: Platform! - pictureguy 15:02:49 10/03/15 (0)

PH16 - Cuernavaca 14:01:41 10/03/15 (0)

Maggies - slapshot 12:49:18 10/03/15 (0)

Isolation platform? - BPoletti 10:09:52 10/03/15 (0)

DIY phono stage? - BPoletti 10:05:30 10/03/15 (3)

RE: DIY phono stage? - texanater 18:18:15 10/03/15 (0)

other choices - valvesonly 16:15:13 10/03/15 (1)

Phono stage performance - BPoletti 18:01:47 10/03/15 (0)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - steve.ott@kctcs.edu 09:21:04 10/03/15 (4)

I'm going "nude" - texanater 09:52:03 10/03/15 (3)

Here's what I hear - steve.ott@kctcs.edu 12:17:56 10/03/15 (1)

Thanks! nt - texanater 18:16:10 10/03/15 (0)

Will do and will let you know [nt] - steve.ott@kctcs.edu 10:22:57 10/03/15 (0)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - RSF 09:20:35 10/03/15 (1)

Its in a different class - texanater 09:49:31 10/03/15 (0)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - Hiendmuse 09:02:44 10/03/15 (8)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - SgreenP@MSN.com 17:25:29 10/03/15 (2)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - Hiendmuse 21:30:14 10/03/15 (1)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - SgreenP@MSN.com 14:30:26 10/04/15 (0)

This is where I am a little confused - texanater 09:55:52 10/03/15 (4)

RE: This is where I am a little confused - SgreenP@MSN.com 17:22:46 10/03/15 (1)

+1 /nt - BPoletti 18:07:57 10/03/15 (0)

RE: This is where I am a little confused - johntoste 14:30:01 10/03/15 (1)

Not ALL bamboo is created equal - pictureguy 15:08:05 10/03/15 (0)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - dirtyvinyl 08:13:35 10/03/15 (2)

A hotrodded 103R - texanater 09:33:29 10/03/15 (1)

RE: A hotrodded 103R - dirtyvinyl 12:38:01 10/03/15 (0)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - SgreenP@MSN.com 07:58:50 10/03/15 (0)

RE: Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime - AudioSoul 07:51:59 10/03/15 (0)

It's very good. It is and will be my primary table. - volunteer 07:35:16 10/03/15 (1)

I still have my Rek O Kut - texanater 09:29:35 10/03/15 (0)

Warning! There is a danger to owning a VPI Prime

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