VPI Direct Drive Turntable

For $30,000.00 I was surprised to see that VPI used medium density fibre board for their choice of material for the plinth including use of MDF for the single arm board. ,,,,,$30,000.00,,,,really ?

S.M.E., Kodo Beat, just to name a couple manufacture tables near this price range, none of them use MDF or even HDF as their choice of material for plinths and arm boards because they know better.
But would it be great for their profit margin per unit if they could using material that is significantly less in cost however proven over and over to be vastly inferior for use for this application.

Yes Lewm the market will determine the fate of this 30 G entry however ,..

Let's say Winfelds costs per motor and power supply with bulk pricing is somewhere in the $5000.00 region .
Now here's the kicker,..

$6.00 for the MDF per unit ,
sealer and paint another $6.00 per unit.

5/8 aluminum plate that's glued to the MDF , $15.00 bulk price per sheet,
machining the aluminum platter lets say $500.00 , "Aluminum ",not stainless steel and copper or some custom blend of materials that you would expect on a table at this price point.

platter bearing $150.00 again nothing special I suppose , I'm sure he has cases of platter bearings in the stock room and finally shop labour per unit $1,000 to $1,500.00 before going out the door and I think I'm being pretty liberal with the shop estimates.
$ 30,000.00 ,...come on .
This is new territories for VPI , I wouldn't imagine anyone in their customer base would jump in and buy one no matter how brand loyal some of them are. Maybe stick with what you know best VPI .

Yes this new cog-less motor could very well be THE motor for direct drive table and could be a break through in table motor technologies ,but a MDF arm board and plinth?

Take a look at Steve Dobbins table, the Kodo Beat for a good example of an exceptional built quality of the highest order or any other table at this price point, you don't get MDF,...
I have no ill will against VPI, I never owned any of their products nor have I dealt with them in any way.
I just think VPI need to rethink the use of MDF in this 30 grand table that's all.

Flieb,If I may add , In the early days of VPI, pre any table manufacturing I remember their bricks and metal platforms for resonate control being advertised ,the VPI bricks were designed to put on top of amplifiers , tuners , preamps ect.
Magazine reviews back then of direct drive tables would bolster the rating by a added star or scale only if the dd table under review was sitting on one of VPIs platform.
Mitch Cotter the man of resonate control for dd tables and probably the most successful back then with his B1 and B2.
On the west coast in California back in the 1980s I clearly remember listening to a shocking expensive table ,arm and mc cartridge sitting in a Mitch Cotter platform / plinth , Technics SP10 MK 3 and low and behold Halcro a Fidelity Research FR 66, obviously a west coast thing.

VPIs business model is repeat business by constant upgrade path, if anyone else does this in the table manufacturing business they copied VPI.
Keep them coming back for more stuff.

And finally for anyone here that have spent $30,000.00 or more on a single component,,,, "A" All I ask "hopefully " for it to live up to every expectation in the long run and "B" to be built to the very highest of standards through out...NO MDF with a plate of aluminum glued to it,...

Lewm if it's that good for this application why did you not use it with your plinths?
Why don't Artisan Fidelity , Porter Audio and Kodo Beat not use this combination of material? The production cost and material savings would be significant.
And why don't you see these combined materials in main stream tables at this price point?

Lewm,I apologize for not reading more carefully,... Years ago some of the serious and more innovative DIY craftsmen on various sites abandoned constrained layering using MDF, aluminum and various mass loading technics for other more effective materials with some involving measured results of various materials before building .

One of a few good examples is what Albert Porter and Chris at Artisan Fidelity use which is panzerholz. Extremely dense, difficult to work with and expensive but very effective even on it's own.

Steve Dobbins as a table manufacture took this to a another level with his own mix of materials for good reasons and all of it comes together with astounding results, a friend has one and it looks I may have to have one also.

My question for VPI is where's the BEEF,,,,,,,? the "majority"of your table is built from maybe $40.00 worth of material, two inches of MDF with a 1\2 inch sheet of aluminum glued to the top of it....the motor maybe fantastic however I just don't get how you arrive at .$30,000.00.,,,,,??