Which Tonearm to go for VPI HW-19 III?

Steve, many of the dealers of cartridges and turntables, (Elusive Disc, Acoustic Sounds, Audio Advisor, Etc,) will carry the MkIV upgrade. It can also be ordered from VPI directly. I can tell you that VPI is really backed up and presently the Aries Black Night platters are in very short supply, if at all. You would probably be looking at about 3-4 weeks for delivery.

I believe that the MkIV upgrade (platter, bearing and suspension) is about $600.00+, the drilled Super armboard (1" thick) about $100.00+.

The RB900 arm is factory supplied with a better quality tonearm cable than the factory 300 arm. I don't know any details on that specific wire. There are many different manufacturers of Rega upgrade cables. I can tell you that my upgrade cable is by Incognito, and the actual wire is Cardas Litz. ANY good quality upgrade cable will work wonders for your RB300.

A fully modified, rewired RB300 is sonically, a completely different tonearm than the factory RB300 tonearm. Quite frankly, it is within spitting distance of the RB900 arm and then some. But, that's comparing to a fully modified RB300 including rewire, weight, endstub, VTA adjuster, and maybe even the TWL mod.

My opinion? Go for the MkIV upgrade first. It will put that turntable in a whole nother' league. And you can sell the existing MkIII platter and bearing here on Audiogon to offset the cost of the upgrade.

Check out this link and scroll down to MkIV upgrades:

http://www.vpiindustries.com/upgrades.htm#hw19parts

Have fun, Ed.

Steve,
I would deal with VPI directly. I've found that to be a more direct route. As for the Discovery cable, many tonearms come wired with Discovery cable. All VPI JMW arms are wired with Discovery, as are the Wheaton arms (Tri-Planar). There are a couple other tonearm manufacturers, but I can't remember them right now. I liked my VPI JMW 10.5 so much I tried a 1 meter length of Discovery Essence between the arm and the phono stage. It was a big improvement over the more expensive Phono cable from Transparent Audio that I had been using. So this is something that may interest you, after the mk IV upgrade of course.

Regards,
John

Thanks Ed and John,
Are you suggesting that I can order the upgrade parts from VPI directly and install myself?

Yes, it's fairly simple. If you have any questions, VPI has answers too. Great customer service.

Regards,
John