vinyl1
Super Member
Yesterday, nearly 100 audio enthusiasts from the New Jersey Audio Society and the Audiophile Society of New York met a Harry Weisfeld's house in New Jersey.
This was the first time I ever ate a slice of pizza at a kitchen table with three $10K+ turntables on display in the middle of the table. There were also no fewer than five listening rooms set up.
In the formal part of the meeting, Mat Weisfeld stood on a kitchen chair and gave a presentation on the reasons for the new VPI lineup. As many of you may have heard, VPI is cutting back on the number of models they have, and eliminating the Classic line. Mat's explanation was that he felt customers were confused by the wide variety of models VPI produced, many of them at the same price point. His goal for the company is to rationalize the line, and say that this is the turntable you should be buying if you want to spend X dollars. The standard line now consists of the Scout, $2K, the Prime, $4K, and the Prime Signature, $6K. The reference line consists of the Avenger, $10K, the Avenger Plus, $15K, and the Avenger Reference, $20K. Mat wants to push these standardized models as the core products of his company.
There were five listening rooms. In room 1, they had the Scout, the Prime, and the Prime Signature set up with identical Ortofon cartridges, using big Marantz amps and the big JBL speakers. Harry Weisfeld was our DJ, and he played a wide variety of LPs. As he explained, the cartridges were not properly broken in, but you could definitely hear the differences betweent he tables. The JBLs were not to my taste, but I politely listened to Harry's explanation of why he prefers them. To me, the sound was like a rock concert with very good sound reinforcement equipment. It did sound nice with the Mofi Grateful Dead playing.
This was the first time I ever ate a slice of pizza at a kitchen table with three $10K+ turntables on display in the middle of the table. There were also no fewer than five listening rooms set up.
In the formal part of the meeting, Mat Weisfeld stood on a kitchen chair and gave a presentation on the reasons for the new VPI lineup. As many of you may have heard, VPI is cutting back on the number of models they have, and eliminating the Classic line. Mat's explanation was that he felt customers were confused by the wide variety of models VPI produced, many of them at the same price point. His goal for the company is to rationalize the line, and say that this is the turntable you should be buying if you want to spend X dollars. The standard line now consists of the Scout, $2K, the Prime, $4K, and the Prime Signature, $6K. The reference line consists of the Avenger, $10K, the Avenger Plus, $15K, and the Avenger Reference, $20K. Mat wants to push these standardized models as the core products of his company.
There were five listening rooms. In room 1, they had the Scout, the Prime, and the Prime Signature set up with identical Ortofon cartridges, using big Marantz amps and the big JBL speakers. Harry Weisfeld was our DJ, and he played a wide variety of LPs. As he explained, the cartridges were not properly broken in, but you could definitely hear the differences betweent he tables. The JBLs were not to my taste, but I politely listened to Harry's explanation of why he prefers them. To me, the sound was like a rock concert with very good sound reinforcement equipment. It did sound nice with the Mofi Grateful Dead playing.