Event at Overture
It has been long over due to make a trip over to Delaware to see our friends and partners at Overture! Overture Ultimate Home Electronics has been a VPI Store Front Dealer for many years and a location to see VPI products on live display. At the recent event we had a wide selection of different types of rooms ranging from entry level/easy to use to shooting for the moon!
The first room as you walked into the store on your left featured a modest and killer sounding system using a VPI Cliffwood turntable with McIntosh Labs integrated amp and a choice of different speakers to demo. The room sounded well above it's price range and was a hot spot for new comers to the two channel market. Which was very refreshing to see at this event! New faces and people who were interested and ready to learn more about analogue.
Moving further into the store Overture had a VPI Prime Scout on display and demonstrated a more high-end but still affordable system that kicked it up a notch. This room was great for showing people what they can achieve in their system while still having room to grow. There were an umber of conversations with customers about how they could start with the Prime Scout, or purchases the Prime Scout with a different tonearm if the uni was a bit too intimidating for them to start.
The back room was firing up our new-ish Prime Signature in Rosewood. With all of the modifications you can make on a VPI turntable, the Prime Signature in Rosewood is being considered a model already upgraded and a visions to be held. Of course it is only second to the world class sandwiches provided by Overture that I'm now kicking myself for not taking a picture as well as the bubbly, outgoing staff keeping everyone fed! Seriously, they found a sandwich that puts the whole spirit of Thanksgiving onto a roll!
Back to the room, the system was set-up like the previous rooms to demonstrating multiple types of gear in different combinations such are McIntosh Labs and Audio Research. For me, an exciting point was being able to have a true listening experience with the Magico speakers. Until now all of my experience has been quick listens at audio shows. This was a more meaningful and dealing experience and I was blown away by how large of a sound stage the Magico's were able to produce with a lot of realism to the notes.
In the big room we had a lot of fun bringing and mounting the first production Fat-Boy tonearm. This specific is Fat-boy #1 and has already been around and demonstrated in a few stores in the same week. We quickly mounted up and started spinning.
Everyone was impressed by the immediate improvement on dynamics and overall life in the music from the Fatboy arm. We dropped it right onto a standard VPI Avenger that was in the main showroom. This room was firing up the top end models from Magico and Audio Research. It was a fun time or sharing records and different types of music and having a bunch of off the cuff/behind the scenes conversations with customers.
We hope this is the first of many events with Overture and you can expect to see us at the store more often. The sandwiches play a bit of a part in that, but the main reasons if because of the new relationships and people were able to finally put a face to. See you all next time at Overture!