@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.