Experience VPI Dragon and/or Mark Levinson 515 turntables

testpilot

all arms I have ever messed with, if they had captured/soldered wires within, were lighter, thinner, more flexible wires with thinner insulation, and ’soft slack’ than the ones used externally.

You can tell when you observe the arm’s inner skate on a blank lp before you apply any anti-skate

My Blackbird came with delicate exposed silk covered wires, no ’wire pushback’. But the silk insulation wore off and hum developed.

VAS re-wired, the new wire is stiffer, he added a VPI junction box with mini-din in and rca out, and that exposed length causes pushback. 

Yes, VPI added the anti-skate as an option to some arms that started without it, I could not tell if it is included on the arm on their Dragon table.

SME arms are no longer available to purchase - only supplied with their turntables.

VPI makes the Mark Levinson turntable

Thanks for responses.

Oracle and Eminent Technology work together.  It has produced good sound in the past.

This was about replacing with a VPI Dragon/ML 515.

I am not reading above that the VPI Dragon would be an improvement, just different.  Thank you.

VAS has his big VPI off-line, currently enjoying TW Acustic, using his collection of VPI Uni-Pivot Arm wands to demo cartridges with it. You could ask Steve Leung what he likes about it

https://vasnyinc.com/

Here’s a TW Acustic with an SME3012 with removable headshell

https://www.emporiumhifi.com/turntables-tonearms-cartridges-phono-stages/tw-acustic-raven-ac-turntable-with-sme-m12-r-tonearmand-battery-psu/

I don’t see a dust cover.

Here's a Raven 2 in Canada, with extra parts for 2nd arm, links to reviews, might be a source to learn about them

https://www.canuckaudiomart.com/details/650268168-tw-acustic-raven-2-reduced/