Tell about your experience with your old Audio-Technica SL-1200s..

All these shells are aluminum, the main difference is weight and wires. Zupreme made by Jelco. Some other headshells made of magnesium, titanium, wood… One of the cheapest and best new headshells is AT Technihard series (fully adjustable).

There are so many great headshells made in the 70s/80s, my favorite are AudioCraft headshells, they made heavyweight too. Grace carbon-fiber headshells (HS-6) and Grace HS-8 are amazing. Ikeda headshells with overhang adjustment are very nice. Stax made lightweight headshell with azimuth/overhang adjustment. Denon made some nice headshells, Sony made nice headshells. Pioneer made carbon shell. This is the one from Kenwood for example. Technics made Boron-Titanium headshell for the EPA-100 mkII tonearm (unfortunately missed on my tonearm). There are many others. Basically, every manufacturer made their own headshells or ordered them from other manufacturers.

@bikerbw If it ain't broke, don't fix it!  Enjoy the music.  

Off topic, but Chakster asked what motor is used in the VPI HW40.  Brushless Direct ThinGap motor, manufactured by ThinGap LLC of Ventura, California.  This is a world class motor.  For those who might be interested let me share some additional experience that might be pertinent and of interest here.  I compared the VPI with the competitiveTechnics, an Air Force One, and a Technics on an aftermarket plinth using a Shroeder arm.  All were stellar.  The VPI sounded better than the Technics by way of the arm (I suspect), but the Technics arm is much easier to set up, a clear trade-off and depending on priorities a decision could go either way.  In the USA the VPI retails for over $3,000 less than the Technics.  The Technics on the custom plinth with the Shroeder arm sounded better than the VPI be a small margin, but retails for between $4k and $5K more than the Technics here in the USA of upwards of $8K more than the VPI.  The Air Force One sounded perhaps different than the VPI and with it's vacuum hold down probably would prove the most versatile with damaged or warped records.  Although in an attempt to distinguish between the VPI periphery ring and weight vs. the vacuum hold down several us gave up the attempt and called it a draw.  This on one record.  The Air Force One retails for about $3K more than the Technics/custom plinth/Shroeder setup.  At this point let me say that the differences between all three of these turntables were not great.  Very slight differences is sound, ear straining in fact. They are all wonderful and would make any record collector one happy camper.  Ergonomically, which is subjective of course, I personally think Technics is the best.  But, bringing this back to this thread, none of these very expensive turntables is significantly better in any particular way to my SL1200GAE.  In fact, the G series would be my first recommendation and my first choice for anyone looking for a first class turntable.  Yes there are better sounding turntables, but only marginally better and at great addional cost.  No less an authority than Mikey Fremer has said as much comparing turntables costing six figures.  Yes they sound better, a little bit, but only a little bit.  The more I think about it the more impressed I am with the G series.

Technics can be purchased as a separate drive (SP10R) while the VPI is a complete turntable for insane price in my opinion (taking in count that it’s a local US brand). Buying separately Drive, Tonearm, Plinth everyone can find affordable gear combo, for example Technics EPA-100 tonearm for $1500 or luxury EPA-100 mk2 for about $2500 (one of the best tonearms ever made).


Great tonearms available for under $1500. New Technics SP-10R drive cost only about $7k in Japan, vintage SP-10 mk3 is cheaper (and probably better). Every component can be purchased used for less $$$.

Direct Drive motor from Technics (Matsushita) used under the platter of Neumann cutting lathe. Nearly all master lacquers cut with Technics DD motor since the ‘70s. It’s the Rolls-Royce of DD motors while the VPI is new to DD, it was a US manufacturer of belt drive turntables (with unipovot tonearms? ).


But even VPI finally decided  to use DD motor, it’s a good sign.

Chakster, I am not going to debate with you, but I think your lens is broken, or perhaps it is that you are looking at things from a distant land.  A reasonable comparison here in the USA would be a Technics SL1000R, which retails for a bit over $18,000 and is competitive in every way with the VPI HW40, which placed into it's proper perspective cannot be viewed as an insane price at $15,000.  Staying with new, comparable equipment, the Technics SP10R in an aftermarket plinth with a Schroeder arm, as I compared previously because it was in my comparison and under serious consideration, retails here in the USA for almost $23,000.  Comparisons, taken in context and fairly show that these are all competitive, and quite expensive.  They are all first level in quality and performance and can be expected to last for a lifetime or two.  My interest is to convey that the Technics G series works as well, will last as long, and sound so good that only very top level associated systems are likely to reveal the very slight difference in sound quality.  I ask myself, is the difference worth the price?