VPI Scout to Michell Orbe SE

Acoustic Signature's been around for a long time. I think there was a break up of the partners or something so there's like two different companies with essentially the same table, one is Acoustic Signature, and I can't remember the name of the other company.

FrankC

I didn't know that. I used to see a lot of Clearaudio, VPI and Rega turntables at shows and some more exotic brands like Brinkmann. While the exotic brands are still there I see less Clearaudio a lot less, still some VPI and Rega but I see many more Acoustic Signature.

Gundam91 Making statements that the VPI arms are terrible puts you in a position of being either a liar, or grossly misinformed. The VPI arms are a bit of a challenge to set up correctly, but if the directions are closely followed, the performance is in the range of the very best arms available. Also, someone posted that he got rid of his VPI arm because of sibilants.... clearly he set up his arm poorly..especially with respect to azimuth. VPI makes some of the best tables and arms that there are. As you go up their product line, the tables are bettered, however, even the less expensive tables provide great value, and performance.

Stringreen,

Ouch! Besides being a liar or grossly misinformed, there's a third possibility that maybe you did not read through what I said entirely. ;-)

Yes, I stated that the arm is terrible, and right after that, I stated why I think it is terrible. I did NOT say that it is a terrible tracker, or terrible sounding arm. What I said was that it is hard to fine tune the settings. Or if you want to try different settings, you could never really go back exactly to your previous settings. This is based on feedbacks from all 4 of my close friends that have or had been using VPI tables (Scout, Scout Master, and HRX).

And I did not knock on VPI products in general. I indicated at the end that after all these years listening to my Orbse SE, my friends haven't ran down to the dealership to buy one to replace their VPI tables yet, except for the ones that upgraded to something else.

FrankC

Stringreen - I would like to make it clear that the arm was setup about as well as humanly possible. I have a long documented thread on here (with sound clips illustrating the sibilance, and photo evidence that each setup parameter was spot on, spanning 3 cartridges, med-high compliance) that shows my progress, which included ultimately having a head tech at VPI setup the arm himself, yet the sibilance remained. Finally he agreed (admitted) that the arm was not appropriate for the job, and recommended I try a longer VPI arm.

Please know your facts before you make blind assumptions.