VPI Direct Drive Turntable

I agree with Stringreen that the market will decide if the price is right for the VPI Direct. Arguing about the price is fruitless. I applaud VPI for introducing a new drive system from their usual belters.

I know Mr. Weisfeld is a collector of vintage turntables including DD units and his favorite is the JVC TT-101 so it's not surprising that he chose a coreless motor. And I agree with Lewm that coreless motor DD tables have the most pleasing sound, at least to my ears. The ThinGap motor is a very unique approach to the coreless motor genre. The Caliburn uses it for their belt drive table but VPI found a way to apply it to their DD so that's exciting. I look forward to future reviews and if positive, I hope VPI can trickle it down to less expensive models in the future. It's about damn time people are paying attention to DD technology without playing with marketing terms, eg, "magnetic drive," "mag-drive," etc... Maybe even Art Dudley will change his mind one day. :)

Teres was once a belt-drive maker and is now focusing on DD so there must be something to it that lead to such development. Time will tell.

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VPI is like the Toyota of turntables, high quality, good performance and reasonably priced. There is a reason why Toyota developed the Lexus brand as they knew that the luxury hi-end market would not embrace a hi-end car made by a mid-line manufacture like Toyota.

I believe that VPI has made a marketing mistake in the branding of the Classic Direct. Do you think hi-end consumers want own a $90K Camry over a $90K Lexus LS460, even if they performed the same?

Brf, Not only do they perform the same (Camry vs Lexus with similar equipment choices), they ARE the same internally. Anyway, VPI is a successful company. Whether they made some unfortunate decisions in marketing their new DD remains to be seen. I doubt that the fate of the company rests on its success, which cannot be said for NVS, TechDas, Caliburn (already defunct, I hear), and some others.

Well, you can still get a Caliburn for half price on eBay.

I think Teres is no longer making their DD tables as they are not featured on their website anymore.

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I am curious about status of VPI. In the past TNT I thought was highly regard as among the big league table. HR-X was also no slouch. At that time, it may not be a Rolls Royce of turntable but probably quite a bit more than a Toyota, I would think.then it seems that in the last 6-7years, while many companies start making outrageously priced table, VPI went the opposite direction and aim for mid market instead with the Classic line. other companies then introduce cheaper tables as triggered down product while VPI made trigger up (is there such a word?) product, continuing to evolve Classic Line into more expensive products. Kind of strange. At one stage, I heard that VPI was even going to make a whole new table with DD that would come with its own stand and all but may be it proves to be too costly or HW may thing it would be too big a jump in their price structure? I definitely am curious to see if VPI rather unorthodox approach is going to work or not. No big word out of Miles yet but his one liner on wbf seems to be very positive for DD so far.