VPI TNT Brochure

The VPI TNT first hove onto my
personal horizon around ten years ago,
and yet, strange to relate, this is the first
time I’ve ever put pen to paper on the
subject of the company’s top turntable.
I owned what was probably the first
TNT Mk I in the country, bought blind
after a brief but happy association with
an HW19 Mk III. It’s a decision that I’ve
never for a moment regretted, and one
that has formed and informed my
audio thinking to this very day. Big,
black and heavy, this complex,
brooding beast of a turntable, used
with the Eminent Technology ET II air­bearing tonearm made me reconsider
both what was possible and the
structure behind accepted wisdom.

Remember, the TNT appeared at
the height of the three point suspended
hegemony, with the likes of Linn, Pink
Triangle and Roksan well and truly in
the driving seat. Its four point
suspension and separate
motor/planetary drive set-up, its high
mass and two inch thick suspended
acrylic chassis all set it apart from the
crowd – but so to did its sound. The
TNT/ET combination was an ear­opening experience, re-defining the
dynamic range, soundstage volume,
transparency and dimensionality and
overall speed stability of the vinyl
source. It produced a big, confident,

poised sound, full of subtlety, colour,
life and power, completely over-riding
the performance of ‘tables that we
British, in our insular way, had
arrogantly assumed were world beaters.
Yet, despite this clear superiority, its
wider acceptance met with dogged
resistance as magazine editors in
particular stood with their fingers in the
dyke of a crumbling belief system.
History has finally swept away those
blinkered individuals, but for me it will
always be the TNT that represented that
all-important first crack in the edifice.

Of course, much has changed
with the TNT itself since that first
incarnation, its designer Harry Weisfeld
being nothing if not an inveterate
tweaker. The platter has become an
aluminium/lead/acrylic composite (Mk
II) while the motor went from square to
round and was physically separated
from the pulley assembly (Mk III). I’m
not sure about the Mk IV, although I
believe there were changes to the main
bearing as well as the more obvious
advent of a separate flywheel to further
decouple the motor and improve
speed stability. The Mk V introduced air
suspension pods in place of the springs
and a vastly improved power supply in
the shape of the SDS, a sophisticated
sine wave regeneration unit and a
welcome replacement for the aging

Let’s not forget that as well as demonstrating
new levels of vinyl performance, revealing the
inadequacies of existing UK ‘references’, the
TNT also showed the door to the first
generation of audiophile CD players,
establishing a performance margin that even
ten years on, with CD finally starting to deliver
on its musical promises, it still easily maintains.

PLC which was flakey at best and
downright frustrating at worst, when its
reluctance to switch to 45rpm could
teach the average mule a trick or two.
Whilst this was more of a problem in
Europe and the UK than its home
market, the PLC was well past its sell by
date. Along the way there also arrived
the JMW Memorial tonearm, named for
the Weisfeld’s son Jonathon who was
instrumental in its development but
tragically died in a car accident before
it reached production. It is an elegant
damped uni-pivot available in 10” and
12” lengths, which along with a
specially commissioned low output
moving iron design from Grado (yes,
before Grado decided to market one
themselves) made a complete VPI
front-end a reality for the first time.

Finally we reach the subject of this
review, the Hot Rod or HR. This sports
the latest incarnation of the main
bearing, now sporting a “60 Case”

VPI TNT

Hot-Rod Turntable and

JMW 12.5 Tonearm

41

by Roy Gregory

EQUIPMENTREVIEW

EQUIPMENTREVIEW

42

tool steel shaft, a unit that according
to Harry Weisfeld is now so quiet in
operation that, along with the improved
isolation provided by the air pod
suspension, the pulleys of the planetary
drive system (designed to reduce the
transfer of motor noise) are now the
noisiest element in the system. The
obvious solution was simply to
get rid of them, eliminating
a major sub-assembly
as well as the
machining they
necessitate in
the top plate.
And while he
was on the
simplification trail he
decided to get shot of the
armboard too, eradicating
another machining operation and
providing the tonearm with a much
more massive and mechanically
consistent termination, albeit at the
cost of one of the TNT’s great claims
to fame; the ability to accommodate
any arm known to man (or more
importantly in this case, woman). Of
course the deck will still accept them,
but you’ll need to choose in advance.

The end result is a slimmer and
lighter looking beast (more like the
TNT Jr) and whilst it
is now pre-cut for
a particular arm,
the vast majority
of customers
are buying turn­tables as a whole
these days.

Having listened
to the sonic
benefits Harry
reckoned that the loss
of flexibility was a cheap price to pay
for the gains involved. Of course,
starting out with a Jr and upgrading to
full TNT status becomes more complex,
but should you wish to upgrade
from say, an RB300 to
another arm,

VPI can supply an acrylic plug to

close the redundant mounting

hole. For those who really want

interchangability the Mk V

remains available, but the HR

is the better sounding (and

cheaper) alternative.
Setting up the TNT has always

been a straightforward
procedure, the major
complications being the

practicality of accommodating
its enormous footprint and

protecting the acres of acrylic

from dust. (VPI did make a

dust cover at one point, but

it was enormous and had

such a deleterious effect on

the sound as to be beyond
serious consideration. Besides, it
looked like a fish tank. My solution
was to use a silk dustsheet, which
worked fine without causing any

static problems.) Having decided

where you are going

to place the

43

deck, make sure its support is
absolutely level and position the main
chassis. Originally this involved placing
the suspension towers and idlers with
considerable precision before lowering
the massive floating deck into place.
Now however, the idlers are gone and
the air suspension units hang from their
sleeves, retained by their valve covers,
making the task simplicity itself. Next
you need to gently place the platter on
the main bearing, ensuring that you
align the guide marks properly.
Place the flywheel
and motor
assemblies and
install their belts,
assemble the
arm (not
forgetting to
attach the lead­out wires) and
you’re ready to set
the suspension.

This involves pumping air into
the small bladders in each suspension
tower until the ‘table floats. Don’t
expect it to wobble like a jelly, just to
be clear of mechanical contact. To get
air into the bladders you’ll need a
Schraeder (car) type bicycle pump
with a lock on action (the only item
missing from an otherwise refreshingly
high quality and comprehensive tool
kit, especially welcome given the
Imperial fixings used on both deck and

arm). Traditional screw on

pump adapters will simply
let all the air out of the
tiny pockets as you remove

them. Air suspension forks

on mountain bikes suffer
from similar problems and
there are a variety of

special hand pumps for
inflating them, as well as at
least one nifty screw on

adapter that allows you to

release tiny amounts of air under

perfect control. Which is of course
how you level the beast. It’s simply a
case of dipping the valves slightly to
lower the appropriate corners, at the
same time making sure that you don’t
ground the deck. It will take a little
practice to get a feel for the
microscopic adjustments necessary, but
it’s easy enough to start again, and
you’ll soon get it right. Replace the
valve covers and you’re away. For more
extreme adjustments you can twist the
Delrin feet that support

the air pods, winding them down the
fixing screws, however, a good solid
mating of pod to foot is to be preferred
(sonically as well as in terms of
practicality and overall stability), and
as long as you levelled the support
properly then this shouldn’t be
necessary. Don’t be tempted to overfill
the bladders as the suspension offers
greater isolation at lower pressures. The
‘softest’ should provide 3mm of
clearance and no more.

Ah yes, those valve covers. I know
that VPI are serious about offering
value for money, but those nasty
plastic screw on caps have no place
prominently displayed on a product at
this price. This is one situation where
a nicely executed bit of bespoke
machining would go a long way.
Who knows Harry, keep ’em light and
offer them in a range of anodised
colours and you could sell your valve
covers to the cycle industry and make
some real money!

Final step in the process is to set
the speed of the deck using the SDS.
This allows you to set the speed with

incredible accuracy (using a battery

powered strobe of course), but its

very precision means that

initial set-up involves

a lengthy session of button
pressing as you vary the output
frequency by 100ths of a Hz. However,
once set the unit gives you instant
switching between 33 and 45 and
required no further adjustment

EQUIPMENTREVIEW

44

final adjustment should always be
made from the cantilever/stylus, or
using a mono recording with one
channel in reverse phase and then
summed. In this instance the
counterweight is ‘dropped’ simply to
keep its mass below the plane of the
bearing. It slides for downforce
adjustment, its locking screw running
in a vertical slot to prevent accidental
offset. You also get a dedicated single
point alignment protractor which
works on the same principle as the
Dennesen universal device reviewed
in Issue 1. I’d still prefer to see a
complete tracing arc, but this is the
next best thing.

Damping is provided by filling the

bearing cup with a heavy oil.
The precise level is critical to the

after the first couple of days and the
bearing settling down. This is such
a massive operational (and sonic)
improvement over the PLC that every
VPI owner should put the SDS at the
top of their wish list - now.

So much for the deck, what about
the JMW arm? The 10” version was
covered by JMH in his review of the
VPI Aries back in Issue 8, but given that
Editorial privilege allows me a little
extra space I can afford a more in
depth examination of this fascinating
product. The guiding principles behind
the arm are structural simplicity and
optimised replay. Doesn’t every arm set
out to optimise replay? Well yes, but it’s
remarkable how few designers agree
on what that aim actually entails, or
provide the tools to achieve it.

In developing the JMW, Harry Weisfeld
(a man with a serious collection of
tonearms and the scars to prove it)
quickly realised that his prototypes
sounded better the more he removed
from them. One sacred cow after
another went to meet its maker,
including the provision of bias
adjustment, until he settled on
mechanical stability and correct VTA
as the critical factors. The result was a
12" uni-pivot with a low-slung centre of
gravity. Contrary to appearances, the
azimuth is set by rotating the eccentric
mass ring around the base of the
bearing housing. The groove in the
headshell accepts a light alloy rod that
sits at right angles to the cartridge.
Viewed from the front it allows rapid
setting of basic azimuth, although the

VTA - the forgotten factor.

Considering that arms like the RB300 dispense
with it all together you could be forgiven for
wondering whether all this effort expended on VTA
adjustment is worthwhile? The answer is an
emphatic yes! The RB300 has never had
pretensions to state of the art performance, and
you only need to look at how many people have
tried to offer solutions to this particular
mechanical blind spot in order to appreciate how
importantly other people view it. The fact that no
other British built arm has actually done the job
any better, relying on simple locking collars for the
most part, merely reflects another aspect of the
UK’s institutional analogue arrogance.

In fact, the one area in which serious state of
the art tonearms can readily better budget killers
like the Rega is in providing more precisely
adjustable geometry and operational parameters ­especially VTA. The Forcell, ET II and Rockport,
Triplanar and Spotheim arms have all done so
successfully. The JMW betters them all.

How critical is correct VTA, and what effect
does it have anyway. Let’s use the JMW and the
Alto re-issue of the Argenta

Concierto de Aranjuez

(SCLL 14000) as a working example. It’s vast and
coherent soundstage makes it an obvious choice,
but that's far from all I’m after. With the JMW’s
height scale set at 15 the sound is warm, round
and indistinct ("blowsy" according to my listening
notes). Raising it to 20 introduces much needed
substance and stability. The opening of the 2nd
movement now hangs together better, with
greater front to back depth, overall focus and
rhythmic coherence. The guitar, almost clumsy
before offers greater range and dexterity. Raising
the arm to the optimum 23 setting locks
everything into place, not just spatially but
temporally as well. The opening guitar strums
become individual, precisely spaced and accented
notes, the melodic theme wonderfully expressive.
Suddenly you can understand why this was
Rodrigo’s favourite recording. It’s not just the
focus and substance of the notes, but their shape
and spacing that brings Yepes’ brilliance to life.
The thuddy bass that is a feature of this disc now
has far more shape, the notes complex and
centred, while the soundstage takes on a special
transparency, accentuated by the immediacy and
perfect timing of the orchestral contributions.
Raise the arm again, to 30, and the sound becomes

pinched and dry, the playing mechanical, losing all
delicacy and expression. Suddenly the whole thing
sounds like an exercise rather than a vivid and
dramatic performance, while the soundstage is
infested with a fine silvery grain that destroys its
depth and far focus.

This listening was conducted with my
ClearAudio Accurate whose Trigon stylus profile is
nowhere near as extreme as a van den Hul, and yet
the window of acceptability was less than ±2
graduations. And the differences noted are neither
subtle nor musically unimportant. In fact, they’re
vital. Now consider that each graduation on the
JMW’s scale amounts to 0.35 of a thousandth of
an inch in arm height at the pillar of a 12" arm.
The implications for 9" arms trying to make
adjustments with basic locking collars are pretty
horrendous - and I haven’t even started on the
subject of different record weights and
thicknesses. Oh yes! I think it’s about time that we
started taking VTA seriously, given the amount of
money we spend on trying to recover a signal
most of us have already lost at the stylus. Still not
convinced? Try a Ringmat support system with its
built in VTA adjustment. You will be.

EQUIPMENTREVIEW

45

overall sound of the arm, and in most
cases less is generally more. You can
remove oil with the tip of a Q-tip, and
in most cases a minimal amount of
damping is all that is required. It is well
worth spending some time getting this
right, with a little experimentation
paying musical dividends.

Perhaps the most controversial
aspect of the arm is the absence of a
conventional bias mechanism relying
on a spring or falling weight. Instead,
the user simply puts an anti-clockwise
twist in the lead out wire before
connecting its high quality Lemo plug
to the termination box. Purists will
wince but having run my Accurate in a
JMW for around six months of heavy
use I detected no untoward or
asymmetrical wear on the stylus.
Nor did I have any problems with the
stability or location of central images.
So, on the whole I can only
applaud the elegance of
the JMW’s solution
to a problem

that
other arms
tend to fudge
anyway. Besides, it
allows the arm to offer
another, unique attribute.

You remember that Harr y’s
second critical factor was correct
VTA adjustment? Well, the JMW is
arranged so that the entire arm
assembly can be raised and lowered by
twisting the micrometer style knob on
the tower beside the main bearing.
Nothing particularly new in that I hear

you say, except that the
VPI’s adjustment is
precisely calibrated,
allowing simple, but
more importantly,
repeatable
adjustments of VTA.
So simple in fact
that those with the
inclination can
adjust it for each
and every
record, and
record the
appropriate
setting for next
time. However, it is
when you combine
this facility with an arm
tube that can be physically
removed, complete with
counterweight, that you hit pay dirt.
Forget interchangeable arm wands or
headshells, the JMW is the first arm that
allows you to swap a cartridge,

complete with all its alignment

parameters preserved intact,

in a matter of seconds:

Remove one arm

assembly, replace

it with another,

connect

the Lemo

plug and dial

in the VTA. That’s

all there is to it! For

audiophiles who want to run
more than one cartridge, shops who
want to compare and demonstrate
them, or reviewers who need to
optimise their source for other
equipment, this is a Godsend. And
whilst you might scoff, consider for
a moment the lengths that someone
spending this sort of money on a
turntable will be prepared to go to
in order to maximise their musical
enjoyment.

Are there costs involved? Well, you

end up with two breaks in the

arm cable (at the Lemo and

the Phono output sockets)

so it would be nice to see a

hard wired terminal box as

an option, with the lead-out

wires connected directly to the

Lemo socket, but that is one

nasty solder job, which means it’s

best done at the factory, which

means in turn that you lose the

flexibility of choosing your

own arm cable. After all, a

botched solder joint is worse

than a decent set of connectors.

The other factor that you can’t

EQUIPMENTREVIEW

of its musical presentation helps to
create the wonderfully palpable
soundstage that has always been a VPI
hallmark, whilst its Row M perspective,
bandwidth and dynamic range keeps
the overall scale natural, and more
importantly, believable. This turntable is
unmistakably the product of a designer
who puts musical considerations first.
Listen and you hear music, rather than
the system playing it. This is one
product that gets it right.

VPI TNT Hot Rod

Speeds: 33 and 45,

independently switched

and adjustable.
Platter Mass: 11Kg
Dimensions (WxHxD): 787 x 254 x483mm
Total Weight: 50Kg

VPI JMW Memorial Tonearm

Type: Damped Unipivot
Effective Length: (12") 308mm

(10") 256mm
Effective Mass (12.5): 11.5g
Prices:
Turntable (incl. SDS and JMW 12.5)

£6500
JMW 12.5 Tonearm £2195
Spare 12" Armtube £995
JMW 10.5 Tonearm £1895
Spare 10" Armtube £895
SDS £950

Distributor

Cherished Record Co.
Tel. [phone]
Fax. [phone]
Net. www.cherished-record-company.co.uk

Manufacturer

VPI Industries
Tel. [phone]
Fax. [phone]
Net. www.vpiindustries.com

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

46

adjust is the damping (at least not
readily and repeatably). As long as the
various cartridges don’t require wildly
different degrees then go with the
minimum - it’s a compromise but a
minor one given the alternatives.
No, all in all it has to be said that this is
the most thoroughly thought out arm
since the ET II, and that is saying
something. This is a massive and very
real benefit. It’s also typical of an ar m
that is so clearly the product of
somebody who is personally passionate
about vinyl replay.

In fact everything about this ’table
suggests that it’s a labour of love, not
least its musical performance. If I had
to pick a single word to describe the
TNT/JMW’s sound then it would be
“honesty”. It offers a complete and
wonderfully credible view of the music,
devoid of the doctored frequency
response, truncated bandwidth or
sonic hyping that so often makes hi-fi
so obvious in its operation. That’s not
saying that music from the VPI is
indistinguishable from reality.
However, it gets two critical aspects of
reproduction spot on, and that makes
its version of events much easier to
accept. Firstly, it’s a well balanced
product doing everything equally well,
with no obvious flaws in its
performance, and no standout
attributes to draw the listener’s ear and
distract from the music as a whole.
Secondly, it gets the proportions and
perspective of the performance just
right. No huge images at the front of
the stage supported by pygmies at the
back, and no tiny orchestras right up
close. The overall scale of the
presentation, and the relative scale of
players within the picture are both
extremely natural, making the
performance itself a natural extension
of the listening experience. Like I said,
easy to accept and satisfying as a result.

How does the Hot Rod sound
compared to the Mk V? We’re going by
aural memory here, which is always
dangerous, but what the heck.

Playing Buddy Holly

Legend (MCA
MCMD 7003) an album that has graced
all my TNTs, I’d have to say that the
most obvious benefits of the Hot Rod
are improved focus, transparency and
low level detail. It seems at first more
forward, but this is actually simply a
case of greater immediacy and the
absence of residual texture in the
acoustic space. The bass is also slightly
leaner, with less bloom than before,
providing a more natural overall
balance with the treble. Compared to
the (vastly more expensive) ClearAudio
Master Reference, the VPI lacks that
‘table’s astonishing “reach out and
touch” clarity and inner instrumental
detail. It’s sax is not as three
dimensional, the distance from reed to
bellmouth not as well defined, but it
makes up for it with the absolute
solidity and coherence of its
presentation. There’s nothing thin or
insubstantial about the sound at all.
Whilst the TNT may not be the last
word in infor mation itself, the
information it provides is properly
presented and backed with a creamy
smooth sense of power and substance
and security. There is a telling
inevitability to the Hot Rod’s music ­you know it’s going to get there, and
you know it’s going to do it without
any unnecessary histrionics.

The DCC re-issue of the

Stokowski/Villa Lobos

Uirapuru (LPZ

1003) is a case in point. You don’t get
much more dramatic music, or much
greater dynamic contrasts, but the VPI
sails through it, instruments never
shifting or growing with volume, the
loud never trampling the quiet, the
constant shifts in tempo evolving
naturally to drive the music. Even
behind the loudest crescendo the
texture and complexity of the drums
and percussion is still apparent, as
befits their critical role in this
atmospheric music.

This is the key to the TNT/JMW’s
appeal. It is musically unobstructive
and unobtrusive. The extreme stability

EQUIPMENTREVIEW