I've found my new scoutmaster to be freaking fantastic. I use a Lyra Helikon cartridge and Ear 834p (deluxe) phono stage. By old tt was a vpi hw-19jr with the pt-6 arm and Glider cartridge. Sonic improvement has been drastic, to the extent that my gf noticed it (let her listen through stax electrotats before me) within a few seconds from the time the needle hit the vinyl.
I listen mostly to classical, but cherish my jazz and classic rock albums too, including some original beatles, dead/garcia, stones, and Hendrix. Obviouslly the scoutmaster is not the extact tt being discussed, but its sonic character is supposed to be essentially the same as that of the scout. Very neutral, some say a little cool but I wouldnt go as far as to call it a cool-sounding tt. As others have mentioned, the scout line has an awesome path, with the stock scoutmaster being claimed by 'Mike' at VPI (with whom I recently spoke) to be 90% as good as their Hr-x.
As for lack of anti-skating on the jmw-9 arm, I've done some critical listening and channel comparing, and have found no evidence of one channel being rubbed up against any more than the other.
