Best table in $1500 range

Todd,

If you have any DIY in your body you should look at the Audiogon thread about "Building a High End Turtable At Home Despot". Find a Goldring GL75 for $100 or less, build a solid plinth for it ($50), put an Origin Live Rega 250 arm on it ($400) and a Denon 103D ($250), or an equivalent Ortofon cartridge, and you have one hell of a TT at about half of the price you were thinking about. I'm selling my heavily modified Linn LP12 (I have about $2,000 in it, without arm) after putting an OL Rega on my GL 75 and the Koetsu Black. The Goldring is so damn ALIVE and dynamic.

All the best

Mark

I've lived with an OL Silver (highly modded RB250) for nearly a year now. It's mounted on a table and cartridge that are really much too good for it, yet it's held its own fairly well. I think Gthirteen characterized it nicely.

A Rega is not the best arm in the world, but neither is a JMW-9. They have quite a different mix of strengths and weaknesses, so they probably work and sound quite different too. The JMW's antiskate "adjustment" is one of HW's better jokes, but adjusting VTA on a Rega with most of the aftermarket collars is even worse (Pete Riggle's VTAF and the Teres adjuster solve that however). Of course there's no decent VTA adjustment on the JMW-9 either. Sigh...

If fit and polish are the deciding factos the JMW wins hands down. Just make sure you stick with medium compliance cartridges. If you like the sound of lower compliance cartridges like Denons, Shelters and Koetsu's, I'd follow Twl's theory and go for a Rega. I've heard my 901 on unipivots that are well above a JMW-9, and they don't cut it.

Choices, choices...

I own a scoutmaster w/ jmw9 arm. And let me tell you, the antiskate adjustment is no big deal and works great. I was skeptical as well, thinking that four thin wires could do the trick, the force necessary to keep the tone arm from flying toware the middle is so small that those wires are very capable of keeping enough force. The other thing is, that anti skate on a lot of turntables is offset by a weight hanging from a string, and is not adjustable at all. The VPI team, through listening to alot of different methods, determined that the best "sound" came from no weight, using a heavier tracking force, and if necessary, putting an extra twist on the wires. anyway just wanted to throw that in, the scout and scoutmaster are awesome turntables, more like works of art, that sound fabulous !!!

im a scout/jmw-9 owner, and i think the vta on the the jmw-9 is fine. it's not quite "on the fly", but pretty close. a little loosening of the screws in the base of the arm, and then you essentially can fine tune vta while the record is spinning. pretty good if you ask me.

as far as the anti-skate, do a search on the vinyl board of audioasylum.com to read harry weisfeld's thoughts, which to me seem valid(and my anti-skate is fine to). or better yet, give vpi a call and get their reasons.