What's the limit for cart upgrade/VPI Scout?

Dan: Like Doug, I would also suggest putting your hard-earned money elsewhere than the cartridge.

At the recent High-End show in Munich, one of the very best-sounding analog systems was in the Taurus room, with Magnepan speakers, Rowland electronics, Raven One table, Schroeder Reference SQ arm, and Dorian cartridge. Of course, it was a major help that the cartridge and arm were set up by Frank Schroeder; who can extract better sound from an analog setup than practically anyone else I know.

In your case, I'd suggest first putting in more work on the turntable, tonearm and phono stage, and if someone local has a widespread reputation as being an outstanding analog setup technician, see if you can hire him to work over and refine your setup.

My experience is that in many cases, time and effort spent on setting up the analog system optimally (or hiring someone who can do a really good job) is worth fully as much as a component upgrade(s).

regards and hth, jonathan carr

I will agree with all of the above for sure. But, I will also say this...If you look one step up from the Dorian at the Argo i, you will upgrade your rig considerably without doing anything else, and for not a huge investment more. The Argo i is simlpy much better than the Dorian IMO.

Kudo's for a most upfront response from Jcarr (not that I'm surprised).

Some might have remained silent. Others might have made some effort toward encouraging a sale of their top model. Instead he voluntarily stepped in to say, in effect, "Not yet, you'll get more from improving your rig and setup first."

Ethical post of the month nomination.

Arnold: You may want to consider the Dynavector 20XM. In my discussions with the folks at VPI this is their "no brainer" for the Scout. I had a 20XH for a while and then switched to the medium output version and heard greater speed and detail. Not a huge difference but worthwhile in my estimation.

Now that your platform has improved vibration control, I suspect your biggest & most cost-effective upgrade will be to improve speed stability. Like you I'm currently without a speed controller(my despised TNT PLC Speed Controller finally gave up the ghost.) Though I could go for an SDS, I'm leaning away from it. Having become convinced of the superiority of thread drive over rubber belts on my TNT, for a bit more money than the SDS I'm inclined to abandon belt drive altogether, and replace the entire VPI engine with the forthcoming Teres rim-drive motor & controller. This could be applied to the Scout as well.