VPI Aries
US Heavyweight

VPI Industries has now been making turntables since 1981, achieving a kind of cult status in its home US territory where the HW-19 range, for example, has become recognised for great sound and good value for money. And as an attractive incentive, VPI turntables typically offer long-term value thanks to the availability of upgrade and update kits to keep the machines as current as the owner wishes.

Its products are now available in the UK again after the folding of ex-distributor Absolute Analogue, and prices are now revised to better reflect a dollar/pound conversion. The VPI turntable range starts with the HW-19 Junior at £550 (upgradable to the Mk. III or Mk. IV versions), and rises to the heights of the TNT range, featuring air suspension and massive over-engineering.

Lying between the HW-19 and TNT range is the new Aries. At £1995 without arm (or £2250 with Rega RB300 arm incorporating Incognito rewiring and VTA adjustment collar) it is up against such local talent as the Michell Orbe and SME Model 10, but is priced below the VPI 3.5 and Series 5, which at £3250 and £4995, represent the very high end of VPI Industries technology.

This is still a true heavyweight though, featuring as it does a solid 50mm thick MDF plinth with boilerplate-like steel on its underside. The platter is taken from the TNT and is a construct of aluminum below, acrylic above and lead within. And the motor assembly, a separate unit á la Michell, Clearaudio et al, weighs in at 17lbs alone. All told, the VPI Aries totals 65lb.

To the main plinth is applied a synthetic piano-lacquer finish. A black acrylic cover sits over the motor assembly to hide the mechanics of the drive pulley, which is connected to a high-torque 500rpm synchronous motor. This drives the platter around its circumference via a round-section clear neoprene belt.

Assembling the Aries is a very simple operation, requiring only for the platter to be lowered onto the main spindle - while linking up markers on the top of the bearing and the underside of the platter - and placing the motor within the cutaway of the plinth. Levelling is easy, as the feet themselves are terminated with small ball-bearings, so they can be twisted around without having to lift the deck, despite the high mass of the complete turntable. I did find that after levelling, the height of the plinth was raised an extra few millimetres, and this confused the belt over which groove around the platter's edge it should sit in. Consequently, the belt would occassionally snap between two grooves during play: not a desirable situation. A quick fix was to place a thin shim under the motor to raise this very slightly.

What is not so easy, or so I discovered, is finding a table or stand to site the Aries upon. In the UK I think we are more used to modestly-sized record players to fit our smaller homes, with more humble equipment-tables within. The VPI Aries' main dimensions are 560x405mm; the footprint of the four Tip Toe (as they are called) feet is about 480mm across and 330mm deep. In other words, the table top must be at least 20in across and 14in deep to accommodate this turntable. Although only about three inches more width than required by an LP12, this is still too wide for many equipment racks.

Listening
Listening to any turntable to judge its 'sound' is rarely a straightforward job, as there are so many variables to consider, such as the delicate relationship between cartridge, arm and phono pre-amplification. So for the majority of the listening time I used a familiar front-end: Incognito re-wired Rega RB300, Orotofon MC Jubilee and Audioscript Sphinx phono stage.

In the States, the VPI turntables are often fitted with either an AudioQuest or one of VPI's own JMW tonearms. VPI also recommends Grado cartridges, going so far as to commission a customised wooden-bodied Grado moving-magnet. With this in mind I also tried a Grado Platinum Signature. Starting with this cartridge showed the warmer, more organic side of the system, and gave some clues to the nature of the Aries alone. It had a tight, metered, sound, vaguely reminscent of a quality direct-drive or idler-drive deck like a Garrard 301; it soon showed that the deck itself was certainly in high-end territory.

While the Grado proved itself to work fine within this sytem, focusing attention on the midband while having a 'tuneful' and engaging bass warmth, I was eager to try a good moving-coil. The Ortofon MC Jubilee works satisfactorily on the Incognito RB300 and after mounting and calibration, it helped show more of the Aries' intrinsic character.

Soundstaging was good, if not the Aries' forte; images were fixed slightly more centrally than with a Michell Orbe, seeming to concentrate a strong mono image over a narrower soundstage. Timing was tight and snappy, certainly in LP12 terrotory here, although sounding a little more tonally neutral and less euphonic. Or, put another way, it had most of the flow and pace of the LP12 while sounding a little drier and more tonally accurate.

Silence is Golden
One of the signs of a good record player is its ability to stay silent. By this I mean to be both quiet acoustically within the room, and to keep surface noise to an absolute minimum. On both counts the Aries scored highly. Motor noise and needle talk (the thin scratchy sound heard directly from the cartridge itself as it amplifies the groove acoustically) were low, and this was confirmed by using a stethoscope on the plinth and motor unit. Likewise, through the speakers, on a good clean record, low frequency rumble was virtually absent, and surface noise was very low. Relating this to music, instruments seemed to image superbly from a black backdrop with little sense of artifice. Overall pitch accuracy was found to be excellent. It lacked some of the 'air' and 'breath' from a turntable like the Orbe, but instead it conferred more 'drive' and pace.

As another turntable in the marketplace, the Aries helps to confirm the enduring popularity of the vinyl medium. Compared to others, it can hold its head up high as a well-behaved, good-sounding deck that is well up to getting maximum musical enjoyment from records. And for many, this American Beauty will look just the part too.

Back