TechDAS lll experience

I think they are a technical achievement and very cool but i would never buy one. Way too complicated for such a small company. If the company goes belly up you could be stuck with a very expensive turntable you can't maintain and you can not sell. In that price range you have tables like the Basis 2800, SME 30/12 , Avid Acutus and the one I really want to hear is the Grand Prix Audio Monaco. It is a sensational design with a top notch record clamping system. It is also handily the most accurate turntable out there with speed variation on the order of 0.0001% which is totally nuts. It is a direct drive table and everyone here knows I do not like any of the direct drives I have heard. I'm hoping this one might be the exception. Put a Reed 5T on it and you have a technological tour de force. It is also elegant being devoid of unnecessary complexity.   

@fsonicsmith   +1000
I just had to laugh at your post. I was a member at WBF until the owner  ( not the one you reference, there are two, although I think your description of that one is spot on, LOL) decided he was going to be ultra supercilious and banned me. The place is nothing but a boring and worthless horn lovers forum now...with, as you say, just a very few regulars who have to stand on their soap box and preach. That, plus one guru who they all bow down to...quite pathetic.

@lewm I was questioning the tonearm mounting scheme myself on the AF3. Hanging a tonearm on a peg would seem to me to be a 'kludge' at best. 
@mijostyn  Agree. The Basis models or the Grand Prix Monaco are IMO far superior sounding to the AF3. I have heard all three models....and like you I am no real fan of Direct Drive. The Grand Prix just about changed my mind.

YOU HEARD THE GRAND PRIX! So, Daveyf what did you think??? These guys design and make stuff for formula 1 and cart race cars. They are very serious engineers working at the tip of the spear. It would not surprise me if they killed it.

The Grand Prix Monaco has been around for quite a while, maybe a whole decade.  It has not made a big splash in the turntable world. What I don't love about it is the rather small plinth and the carbon fiber. I have a bias that CF causes a kind of muffling coloration that I have not liked in speakers or tonearms.  The small and ergo maybe light weight plinth puts me off because I favor high mass plinths for DD on the premise that Newton's Third Law of Motion applies, the motor wants to rotate either the plinth or the platter, and it doesn't know the difference.  Thus, the plinth must be massive to channel all the rotational energy into the platter. But my theoretical questions mean nothing; one would have to hear it.