TTWeights closing their doors


Has anyone heard of this, just caught a recent for sale item from them that mentioned they will be closing their doors for table manufacturing on 12/18/15.
audibleguy
Nice, as you leave the audio market due to your inability to compete, you slag a US manufacture that has successfully manufactured turntables for almost 50 years and continues to prosper.  Way to garnish sympathy.  

TTW, I have seen your work, own some of it, and I fully see your point about quality.  Do I detect some ambiguity as regards your going out of business?  That is, will you continue to make product on special order or something like that?  Platter mats, record weights, and peripheral rings are always in demand, if one plays vinyl.

We did not have to close our shop but....just sold my company for a ton of cash, LOL.

We did not go out of Business, meaning we  chose to sell our shop and take the money vs. Building cheap shit and making money.

There are many ways of making more money than in manufacturing, I have been machining for 35 years and have owned my own business since I was 19 years old.

 We had 2 Million dollars in equipment and owned the building and all our gear. 

We did this out of passion not simply to build the cheapest table and sell it for the most money like the rest. We designed over 300 products, ALL original but have been copied all over the place. We did not go out of business,

 I made a decision to NOT COMPETE with cheap turntables, 

We did actually build a 4 tables with a cheap VPI Hurst motor/low cost inverted bearing, cheap laminated pluinth... and it cost 1 grand to build, was going to sell it for $2500.00 but it was just another belt drive. I could EASILY compete but I am not interested in building low performance turntables. 

Anyone can build a cheap belt drive (they come out of the wood work EVERY day another me too belt drive) there is nothing to it. But we are innovators and we sold a ton of RIM Drive (over 1000) tables and gear but the margins are getting too slim.

I admire VPI's business but not their turntables, they have a great business model, use inexpensive materials, use the same design in different packages, we could have done that it is simple,

But no thanks, our table(s) will now be legendary, you will not see a 100 LB rim drive turntable with tolerance of +/-.0001 (yes 1/10 of one thousands of an inch actually machined like aircraft parts.


The sound, you may be lucky to hear one some time but NO ONE sells their TTW Tables, well about 3 a year - thats a 99.5% customer retention rate

Vinyl will always rule, but I will not be making turntables JUST TO COMPETE

I actually love the vinyl music, and money was secondary.

Happy Holiday to you and your family,

It was fun,

Larry Denham

TTW Audio

PS - VPI was founded 37 years ago...not 50
They built there first tables around 1985 .... so 30 years in business.

LJT - TTW 36 years in buinsess.
Just an FYI
So you took a look at the landscape of the audio business and made a calculated decision to take the money and run.  That's fine.  I, for one, am happy for you. I see no reason for your evident anger.  Good luck.