Vpi aries with Benz L-2 cartridge


I've had the table for about 3 years and I'm getting tired of it. It sounds bloated to me and slow. I'm looking for a table with prat. I can sell my aries for about 2000.00. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
taters
Taters, The KAB Strobe is pretty much the gold standard to have for Belt Drive Tables. Without some form of Motor Controller, (PLC-SDS, or Walker) the Stobe might show you have a +- error, but you won't be able to do much about it. Belts need to be periodically changed, it's the nature of the beast.

Are you absolutely sure your Stylus is clean? What do you use? If not the Mr Clean Magic Eraser, you might want to read up on some of Doug Deacon's methods for using this tool in the archives.

I personally think the original Aries is a fantastic Table, and a very pretty one as well, but with any table, there has to be synergy of Table-Arm-Cartridge-Pholo Stage, and even Cabling, and also as important, critical, proper set-up of Arm-Cartridge.

The Benz's are very good Cartridges, very versatile IMO, work well with virtually any Arm, and I've had two in my lifetime, the Glider, and still have the Ruby 3, with almost no use on it.

They're warm, smooth, nice mids, nothing seems to be lacking, relative quiet in the groove, but......

When I swapped to a new ZYX Airy 3X, this was a Cartridge I liked better than the Ruby 3, seemed to have better speed (If you wanna call it PRAT?) detail, less bloat without the sacrifice of any bass response, cyrstalline highs, and a Cartridge that I found was even quieter in the groove. (All were used on a VPI Modded HW-19 MK-IV Table)

We of course cannot perhaps persuade you, if you have the bug to upgrade to another Table, that must ultimately be your decision. A mint condition, used VPI SDS could be gotten, and if you decided to still then sell the Table, the SDS could probably be sold again, without any loss of money.
taters-You don't need to buy anything to check the speed. A download-and-print strobe is available here:

http://www.conradhoffman.com/chsw.htm

and any light source will work-fluorescent works best, but incandescent works also. The main advantage of the 100.00 KAB is that it doesn't rely on your home AC-generated 60hz frequency which may be (very) slightly off. If the strobe shows that the speed is off, you can make slight corrections without a SDS by moviing the belt up or down the motor pulley-it's slightly graduated in size for this specific purpose.
***The cartridge is fine. I haven't checked the speed yet. What would I need to check the speed?***

As a VPI Aries II owner, I concur with the other suggestions made about checking the speed of your turntable. For what it's worth, I've found the following to be excellent upgrades to my Aries: SDS and Ginkgo Cloud 11 isolation platform. The SDS really is critical for best performance on VPI tables. The Dynavector Karat 17d2 cartridge seems to match very well with this rig.

Good luck!
It's the table and it's inherent design. You can buy any cartridge you can afford and might sound good on your VPI, try it on a Lenco and it will sound better. Had a direct access to my friend's VPI Superscoutmaster for 3 months. He never like the sound even with Koetsu, Dynavector, and Airtight. He bought a Rek-O-Kut and move on to the Garrard 401.

Just my experience.