UPGRADE FROM VPI SCOUTMASTER


Is the vpi prime a significant upgrade from the Scoutmaster.
digital3
I just noticed the OP was a month ago. A one-liner. The OP didn’t even bother to use a question mark. He hasn’t posted since. And his name is digital.

Well, digital3. I guess digitalTroll was taken.
@soundwatts perhaps your reading comprehension is not the best. Your writing skills are not so hot either. I didn't have "and issue or two". I lived with multiple VPI unipivots for almost ten years. You went from one fiddly table-the LP12-to another. Have you ever lived with a deck that had a top tonearm like a Graham, Reed, Moerch, or SME? Once you have, you see how crude the VPI unipivots are by comparison. Yes, for the money they are very very good-unipivots afford a means of providing minimal friction/stiction at low cost. 
You are an engineer and yet your total conjecture is laughable;
I always wonder if that was a fixed bearing how much stress and twist that creates for the cantilever thereby straining the suspension and innards of the cartridge. 
Oh yeah, those "innards"! Is that an engineering term? 
I must say that Mat is a gentleman of the rarest order. His response causes me to think very highly of VPI and I myself would love to have the HW-40. But I have about the price of two HW-40's invested in my TD124 and Garrard 301 so I am simply not in the market for another deck. 
If anyone has an issue with the "wiggle" of the unipivot on a VPI arm...for 150 you can install the 2nd pivot which eliminates the wiggle, and provides better sound for the arm.  Highly recommended.
And of course there’s no reason one cannot mount any arm one prefers on any VPI table if he or she so chooses. I don’t know, I still like my HW-19 Mk.3, and now an Aries 1. Great values used (the only way you can buy them, of course). I anxiously await the next iteration of the Townshend Rock, an Elite Mk.2 version of which remains the center of my LP playing system.
nd of course there’s no reason one cannot mount any arm one prefers on any VPI table if he or she so chooses.

This is why up around this level it pays to start looking at each component and not lump it all into "turntable". I just think in many cases it makes a lot more sense to focus on improving one part at a time. Arm or table, could do either one first, hardly matters which. For most of us that means being able to afford an arm of a level that would be too expensive if included with a turntable. Don't even have to sell the one you replace, keep it and put it back on when its time to sell. At which time between what you saved and what you'll get selling you can afford a really good table. Its more work, takes a little longer, but a whole lot better in the end.