Upgrade Rega P25 to VPI Aries? Advice?

IMHO, your suggested upgrade will not move you very far up in the range of mid- to highend analogue frontends. Sure, it will offer an improvement over the Rega but won't be nearly as good as a Basis/Graham combo. What's more, you can upgrade the Basis 2000 line from what you now wish to pay to what you'll eventually want. I know, you can do the same with some of the VPI line, but you'll never get to a point where your VPI will sound as good as the Basis. I know, I've owned both a TNT/Airtangent and Debut/Graham. Give a listen, of course, before the plunge. It's your opinion alone that counts.

I suggest you keep the P-25 and invest in a better cartridge.The Rega is a great table and the RB-600 is a very fine arm.Look into a Grado Reference.The hum problem you may have read about on the Grado's is only audible when the arm is cued up.I have never heard hum during music or even between tracks.Keep the table!!!

I have an Aries and love it - the looks are great and with the JMW arm also sounds great with the Benz-Micro .4 cartridge. However you have a very good table and arm so spend the money on an upgrade cartridge and phono preamp and buy some more records.

It is a trueism in high end audio that at certain point you have to pay more money for small improvemnts but better sound. I was in the same position as you awhile back, I had a Linn LP12 table with a good arm and cartridge but I wanted to improve the sound. I listened to the VPI Aries and the TNT with the JMW arm and went with the Aries, JMW arm and Grado Reference cartrigde. While not light years better than the Linn setup a definite improvement in my system. I think it all comes down to if you want to spend more money for a 10 -20% improvement. To get a dramatic improvement over your Rega, you will have to spend big bucks. Listen and deceide if the improvement is worth it for you. Good luck.

Thanks for the followups to my question. It sounds like from the comments here that I would probably not get that dramatic an improvement with the Aries over the Rega, esp. when the Aries is easily 3 times the price. I might start researching a different pre-amp & phono stage at some point, & maybe buy a VPI record cleaning machine in the meantime......thanks again.