VPI's new "Vanquish" Ultra High-End turntable is a STUNNER!

VPI is the result of one man's desire to become more involved in his hobby without enough knowledge to make wise engineering decisions, coming up with an array of glitzy sub standard turntables and tonearms. It is what happens when you have more money than you know what to do with I guess. Perhaps the new gymballed tone arm is a sign that this will change under his son's direction? This turntable is a sign that it will not. Putting the Techdas AF 1 through 5 in the same room with this stuff is an insult. It's only fault is that is is not enough better than an SME 30/12 to justify the added expense. But if money were no problem I would certainly go for one just because it is a beautifully made engineering tour de force. 

Mind you Techdas uses the same principle with the tone arm boards as VPI.(ie cantilevered) and nobody seems to be on a crusade to denigrate their design choice.

Agree with theophile. There is a market for $100K turntables. It's the same market for $200K speakers, half a million or more in electronics, etc. Ragging on VPI or TechDas or others for building state of the art tables for the wealthy is bizarre. Do you not understand marketing?

Mijo, That's "gimbal", not gimbal.I can't believe what a bunch of childish responses this thread collected. Yes, most of us, including me, cannot afford the Vanquish, but the reason to jump all over it cannot fairly be based on cost alone. (If it was composed partially of parts done in red but cost $5000 instead of six figures, would that make the choice of red less reprehensible?  Are aluminum and lucite, particularly when used together to form a single piece with constrained layer damping inherently bad? If so, say why please. And since none of us can have heard the thing, it seems unlikely that any of the disdain emanates from a place of wisdom.  The thing is what it is, and those who have the moolah to buy it will know what they're getting. Here we have mostly expressions of envy in one form or another.

Insanity on public display in my opinion. It is stuff like this that gives audiophiles a bad name. Now, how many people could afford it, unless it was reviewers getting it on free loan or multimillionaire folks like Trump, who will buy it to show off.