Platter upgrade for VPI MkIV?

@Slaw. I care about the opinions in totality and in general. I don’t place much stock in the "recommend me a phono stage, cartridge etc." type posts because they are usually just recommended by a sample of one or so. The "blah, blah, blah" sounds great is really nothing more than "I like what I’m listening to now" opinion. They mean nothing really. What I don’t care for especially is the kind of interactions between you and Stringreen! He says this, you have an issue with what he says. That kind of interaction is especially worthless IMHO. SG has maybe heard a lot of what HW recommends and since he likes that, he feels safe in passing on his opinion. We all know he hasn’t listened to it all. No one has! When anyone says this is a great piece of equipment it can only be in comparison what few thing he or she has compared it to. I happen to belong to a group that has greater than 300 members and have listened to hundreds of systems now. I have developed a few general likes and dislikes. For instance, I have not heard a metal dome tweeter that doesn’t sound harsh to me. I find OTL amplifiers lacking in drive. Solid state tends to sound sterile to me but the really high end stuff is less objectionable than lesser stuff. So I can generalize a bit. Let others do the same. When I read a review of something that is likely to sound counter to my tastes, I will consider my prior experience.

In summary, I do care greatly. What I care about less than anything else is your opinion of others. Not you personally, but anyones’ attacks on the opinions of others!  Let it go.  It detracts from what can be gleaned from this thread.

Slaw, you asked the question about platter upgrades six years ago.  You got several opinions on what to do, in essence, "keep what you have" was the response.  Now six years later you decide, in your opinion, that response was wrong. OK, that's fine.  The problem is when other people seem to contradict it, it's not fine.  Everyone here is expressing opinion, most of us have limited experience, but want to share our experience with others.  That's how we learn.  Sometimes the things we learn don't jibe with our experience, so be it.  Each of us experiences this hobby of ours in different ways, hence the common phrase "your mileage may vary (YMMV)".  In this case you and Stringreen have differing mileage, it's not a big deal.

My $0.02, having been a VPI owner for many years.

Acrylic beats aluminum. Heavy beats light. The type of bearing doesn’t matter; the quality of the bearing does. Each type of bearing has its advantages and disadvantages.

IMNSHO, and that of some experts, the acrylic/lead (which I use) and super platters are the best. I switched my original TNT bearing for the Mark V, which I think is the best (or nearly the best) non-inverted bearing VPI has made. FYI VPI uses a non-inverted bearing as the main bearing in its best belt driven TT, the Avenger Reference with the magnetic platter.

The personal arguments here are of interest to no one.

FYI VPI uses a non-inverted bearing as the main bearing in its best belt driven TT, the Avenger Reference with the magnetic platter.

For clarity, the magnetic drive platter uses a traditional non-inverted oil bath well bearing to support the drive platter which also has an inverted bearing to support and isolate the slave platter. 

Yes, of course.  But the bearing that does most of (indeed, almost all of) the turning is the non-inverted bearing.  My only point was that there is a popular misconception that inverted bearings are inherently superior and non-inverted bearings are inferior.  The excellent performance of the Avenger Reference proves otherwise.   The inverted bearing isolates the slave platter from speed variations of the drive platter, but not from its non-inverted bearing.

As stated, a major advantage of a non-inverted bearing is that it sits in an oil bath.