VPI's new "Vanquish" Ultra High-End turntable is a STUNNER!

I took a gander at it yesterday at CAF.  Still can’t get past the pure obscenity of a $100k turntable.  

"The second arm on the longshoreman's pier of an armboard as pictured clearly relies upon a junction box. "

Putting the tone arm at the end of a "diving board" that can flex is never a good idea.  The primary dogleg arm board appears to add a lot more mass at the suspended portion, which can only make matters worse.   There is a thread on VPI's forum that attempts to address this oversight on their current tables (adding support at the base of the tone arm as well as at the end of the outrigger).  It's too bad this tweak showed up too late for them to incorporate in the new table:

http://www.vpiforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=13261#p56423


The Vanquish also sports the new 14" fatboy tone arm with no headshell offset.  HW maintains that the zero offset means no skating force and that the arm still has 2 null points.  Unless someone changed the laws of geometry, both of those assumptions are incorrect.  Not only will the arm exhibit dual skating forces (towards the spindle outside the single null and towards the record edge inside the single null), but the maximum tracking error and distortion will be higher than a 9" arm with proper offset.

As for the aesthetics, I'm with the rest of the commenters, IMO it looks ridiculous.  As far as the $120K price tag....the new HW40 with the same direct drive motor is $15K;  the magnetic platter interface was $6K;  voyager preamp was $2.5K.  That leaves over $95K for the stand and the added bling.  I guess there's one born every minute....

Looks like a candy apple Jukebox.

Another brilliant design from VPI.

Once again VPI has taken a possibly good motor and hopefully decent bearing, stuck something flat and black and round on it, and tarted it up with their iconic black acrylic and stainless steel layering they continue to call state of the art engineering, even after having made the same damn thing for going on like 30 years now.

If they can sell it then VPI truly is a marketing juggernaut. Like Rolex, maker of the world's finest $800 dive watch, which they somehow manage to sell for $8k, VPI is now the maker of the world's finest $10k turntable, which the question now is how many can they sell for $120k?

Well let's see... take the number with more money than you know what, multiply by the number of them who couldn't mount a cartridge to save their life, times the number eager to pay a couple grand to someone who can perform this simple task..... carry the one,.... wow, its a pretty big number!

Honestly hard to say which is worse- VPI shamelessly shilling the same old black and stainless schtick, or audiophiles lazily lapping it up. 

Austin Martin's version would get my $ first.