If you were looking for a direct drive turntable ...

Yes Raul you keep posting good information and It is appreciated by me.  I hope others are reading it too.  For example the recent technical paper of 9" vs. 12" tonearms, which is excellent.

Bill

Just for the record, in more ways than one, I don't think the Pioneer PLX1000 should be classified as "vintage".  It's a recent model apparently aimed at undercutting the cost factor of the Technics G series turntables, in that it is cheaper than any of those.  So, it's a candidate if you are on a budget, but not in the vintage category.  Pioneer did make a very high quality line of DD turntables back in the day, topped by the nonpareil Exclusive P3, which is now very costly if you can even find a good one. Below that was the Exclusive P10 and then the Pioneer line headed by the PL70 MkII, I think. (Chak can correct me if I have the alphanumeric designation wrong.)  All of these used coreless motors. These top 3 came with an excellent tonearm, too.

I have moved on from Belt Drive and Idler Drive, but still retain these TT Drives to use at my leisure.

I also have the opportuniity to listen to a SME Belt Drive, Linn Belt Drive and Garrard and Lenco Idler Drives in other systems.

Today I use a DD as my main TT and others I know have swapped out their Belt Drive TT's to be superseded by DD in their systems.

Taking the Drive out of the equation, there are other areas where the DD wins over.

The DD has in many cases especially on the models being refferred to, exceptional speed control built in.

Other Drive systems can cost much more to achieve a speed control that is with similar desirability.

An Idler Drive can easily have a Standalone Speed Control that commands a $1000+ and Belt Drives have had many add on ancillaries to improve Speed Control at similar asking prices. 

This is one of the reasons I became interested in a DD.

After hearing a DD in A/B comparisons to a owned and well respected Idler Drive,

I became a convert to the DD and have not looked back.   

mijostyn

I am happy to report, my friend/neighbor/music producer and I listened for 4 hours and we could not entice the piano to sing.

we agreed with you, it must be doing something, but try as we may, could hear no sound emanating from it. he walked here, there, bent, stretched behind, ...

I thought, lets get blasting, and hit pause. the magnets stop the speakers rapidly, but the piano would keep singing. nope.

lucky is all I can say.

....................................

meanwhile, I had kept my tweeter's l-pads too low, he heard that readily, I adjusted, them speck by speck, he listened, then the slight compression he heard was gone, he pronounced the sound, imaging, depth excellent, and suspected when I checked the next day with the sound meter that I would find we raised the tweeters 2db.

sure enough, I simply perfected the Left tweeter's L pad a speck to match the right one with specific frequency bands from the GRP/Carver Test CD.

Listening a great deal the next day, I realized my mistake, and it's more than subtle effect.

While the meter was showing the level of the 16k band which I surprisingly heard, I thought, if I, 73 year old ears, can hear 16k, then it must be too high for Donna and younger ears. So, I lowered the L-Pad to reduce the tweeters (by about 2db is turned out).

What I didn't think about, didn't realize: the SPL I was hearing did not correlate to the SPL of the Meter. I heard 16k surprisingly well, but I think it is fair to say not as well as the meter.

Thinking/Listening the next day, duh, I wasn't just erroneously avoiding 'too much tweeter', I was causing some compression, because it reduced both the volume and time decay of the overtones of the upper mids.

The Eurythmics, Andreas Vollenwider, Blue Nile are full of splendid highs and the overtones of lower notes I had cut off. 

What a gift to have my friends ears.

I agree, the best isolation solution is a wall mount for your turntable, but I feared drilling anchors into our apartment wall. We got a set of adjustabe sorbothane isolation turntable feet here, Turntable Phonograph Vinyl Record Player lsolation Feet – Mnpctech