VPI upgrade?

I’m a VPI lover, VPIs love upgrades. I own a scout II, upgraded the feet, motor, and added a walker speed controller. Also put a Koetsu rosewood signature on it. It will take anything you throw at it and return the favor. In my opinion you can’t go wrong with this table. As for your question, the Prime would definitely be an upgrade, but be sure you’re doing all you can do as far as upgrades on your current scout….you might get away a lot cheaper and get the same benefits. Good luck!

VPI makes nice turntables. Always have.  I presently have an HW40 that is quite the berries and am resurrecting my old HW19MkIII bought new in 198?.  I have also owned but traded a fully pimped out Prime.  No regrets, they all work just fine.  My present decision is which arm to settle on for the old MkIII.  I have an SME Series III and an SME Series II Improved.  Both have been rebuilt by SME Canada. Anyway, to your question, if I were you I would go for an arm upgrade.  The VPI Unipivot works very nicely with Harry's stabilizer mod and that is the way to go for your turntable in my opinion.  When I was messing with my Prime, it came with a 3D arm or course, and Harry suggested that I try a metal arm, which I found used here at Audiogon for a very reasonable price.  After a lot of ABing, I grew to prefer the metal arm.  Go figure.  Try it, you can't go wrong and you can always resell it if you find something later that suits you better.  The thing is that new stuff is not necessarily better, just different.  And with VPI, well we are a bit of a cult it seems.  Have fun.

I have the exact same turntable and cartridge...Scout 1.1 w/ 2M Black, and have enjoyed since I bought it 1 yr used.

I have the itch to make some changes as well, but really do not know enough about attempting to align a cartridge on it and complete setup. I only have the paper template alignment jig, and really should consider buying the real thing.

MY initial upgrade will most likely be a phono preamp, as I'm using my Yamaha RX-A1030 receiver using its internal phono preamp. Once that is done I'll then have some flexibility as to direction for cartridge. 

Chris

With all the different motors, motor capacitors, motor housings, tonearm bases, various tonearm wands (including wire & junction box wire), platter materials, platter machining, footers (rubber tipped cones?!) to mention a few variables, I have no idea what a Scout 1.1 is.

Sort of makes it difficult to make an educated suggestion. Having said that, I think any Scout with the right assembly of parts is capable of tremendous performance and is a favorite of mine with a complimentary cartridge.

For a blind recommendation, the front motor position Classic variants seem to be consistently good.

For a blind recommendation, the front motor position Classic variants seem to be consistently good.

One exception, “Oh! You got one of those?!” I have run across a few very early (single shipping carton) Classics where the delrin tonearm base riser was too tall preventing proper arm height w/o a cartridge spacer - something you never want with their unipivot. Just swap the 3/4” delrin spacer for a 1/2” 👍