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

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.

Hyper capitalism leads to hyper consumption in just about any consumer product category you care to think of. Actually it's sort of a mystery why it took the audio industry such a long time to tap into this market. Perhaps it's because audio was just a hobby for geeks. But now with the tech revolution the geeks have taken over the planet. So audio has suddenly become fashionable and the industry is savouring the moment.

This might explain the current avalanche of $100k+ audio components. This trend enables cutting edge designers to really push the envelope and develop state of the art products better than anything we've ever heard before. Some of these technological advances will find their way into lower priced derivatives. This is good news for us  'normal' audiophiles.

But the prospect of making huge profits on 'audio trophies for the rich' probably attracts a different breed of 'entrepreneurs' as well. It's these characters that give the industry a bad name. The most obvious category that fell victim has probably been cables.

Vinyl playback has become an expression of excellent taste in trendy circles and the turntable has turned into something of a status symbol. So it's bound to fall victim to these characters as well. They simply go after the money of well heeled trophy hunters who don't have a clue about sound quality. It's painful to watch and it may even be harmful to the industry, which might explain the angry tone of voice in some of the contributions. 

I'm not implying in any way that the VPI falls into this category. Most likely it doesn't. VPI has been a reputable manufacturer for many years, even in times when vinyl playback was still on the lunatic fringe. I definitely don't like the 80's red & black styling, but that's a personal call. I have no doubt it will sound great and anyone with the dough who does like this styling will likely feel they get their money's worth.

edgewear, you never get your monies worth when you spend 2-3 times as much for an inferior product. However the person who buys one of these would not know the difference. In reality they will sell very few of them because the vast majority of real audiophiles are not that dumb.
I just discovered if I place a neodymium magnet 1.004 meters from the spindle on a line through the horizontal bearing of the tonearm the image just snaps into focus:)