Vpi Hw19 Mk4 Turntable W/tri-planar Tonearm And Lyra Mc Cartridge W/low Reserve For Sale

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We’re Stereo Exchange, located in New York City. We've been in business since the 1970s and are a major high-end dealer. We have all the current top brands on display in our huge showroom.

For Sale: One used VPI HW-19 Mk4 Turntable serial number with a fantastic (Wheaton) Tri-Planar Tonearm and Lyra TITAN-i Moving Coil phono cartridge.

This is a real top-flight record playing system that will satisfy even the fussiest audiophile.

It is also in fantastic shape.

I do not know how many hours are on the cartridge, being a trade-in, but it passes my Shure Test Record set very well.

The tonearm is a Tri-Planar tonearm, and I’m 90% sure it is a Mark 2 version.

This is one of the best tonearms available.

The Lyra Titan-i is a low output moving coil cartridge and sounds fantastic. It has a great reputation.

The buyer will receive a brand new drive belt we ordered from VPI with the turntable.

You will need to supply your own audio cable. It just plugs into the little “box” on the rear of the turntable base.

The VPI record clamp is also included, and the cartridge has the stylus guard.

This turntable uses ANY standard RCA phono cable you want, since there are jacks on the tonearm housing.

You will also need a thin wire to ground the turntable to your preamp.

When I tested it at home, the amount of noise I got from my older records was LOWER than with most other turntables I have used, which is a SURE sign of a great cartridge/arm/table combination.

What makes a great turntable system?

First off, it should be very quiet, which is to say, free from rumble. All VPI turntables are quiet, but this one is designed so virtually NO NOISE from the motor gets transmitted through the platter.

The motor on this turntable is attached to the massive base, but the tonearm and platter are attached to a different very massive plate that is suspended from the base by springs.

This effectively isolates the platter/arm/cartridge from any motor noise AND outside world vibrations.

It should run at the correct speed. This turntable has a precision-machined motor pulley and a rotationally stable motor that locks onto the AC FREQUENCY (which is always precise) NOT the VOLTAGE (which varies) and will run on speed with no attention needed, for a lifetime, without the need for any pitch control, strobe, or any other nonsense.

The speed should be very steady, which is to say, have no flutter. This turntable has a massive platter that creates a great flywheel effect. If you hear flutter, it’s not from this turntable.

This is also a multi-pole motor that runs VERY SLOWLYTcompared with most turntables. This slower rotation produces much less noise, and also the wear-and-tear on the motor is MUCH less, since there is less heat build-up.

VPI motors last and last.

The platter should be inert. As the stylus (needle) plays a record, tiny vibrational waves are set up in the record’s structure. If these are not absorbed by something, these waves go back and forth through the record and give a slight “echo” effect, and the sound is not as distinct.

This turntable has a platter made of a polymer with similar mechanical density as a record, so the platter absorbs these vibrations, pulling them out of the record. This gives the sound a greater sense of clarity.

On the underside of the platter (see photo) is a cork liner placed into the platter to further damp any vibrations.

The tonearm should have low friction. This turntable has a VERY high-end gyro-type tonearm with built-in damping (one reason why record noise is so low, I suspect). The combination will play amazingly warped records like they were flat.

The phono cartridge must be very good. This turntable is equipped with a very high-end and wonderful sounding MOVING COIL phono cartridge.

PLEASE NOTE TWO THINGS:

Since this is a moving-coil cartridge, you will either need an amplifier with a moving coil input, or an outboard moving-coil cartridge preamp (they start at about $200 and go up from there) or you may want to UNmount the cartridge and put in a less expensive moving-magnet type, which can go into almost any amplifier.

If you have small children around the house, you might want to replace the moving coil cartridge with a “cheaper” cartridge for now, since they stylus is not a “pop-in” type and is expensive. You can always put the MC back when the kids get a little older!

VISUAL CONDITION: This turntable is in SUPER nice shape, as you can see. It has no significant blemishes to my eyes, and seems to operate well in all respects.

The dust cover is in amazingly good shape…better than most dust covers are after a month of use in a typical home, in fact.

This turntable is belt-drive, like almost all audiophile turntables. It’s not that direct drive is bad. In fact, direct drive is best for discos and DJ work, which this turntable is NOT made for.

For home use, however, only the isolation from motor noise that a belt provides will yield the best sound quality.

In the case of this model, the motor is VERY strong, and, combined with the new belt, brings the platter up to speed amazingly fast.

The Tri-Planar tonearm has TWO tube sections. This special design places the vertical pivot point of the tonearm roughly in line with the record surface, not an inch above it, as in most turntables.

This reduced what is called “peak warp wow”.

Warp Wow occurs when a tonearm goes up and down slightly over record warps (records all have SOME warping).

When a typical tonearm goes up and down, the EFFECTIVE length of the tonearm is changing, as it travels around an arc, which has the same effect as the tonearm moving back and forth as it goes up and down…the music changes pitch!

By placing the tonearm pivot in-line with the record surface, we are at the point in the pivot arc where we can travel up and down and there is very little side to side movement---we are at the 270-degree point on a circle.

This means more steady pitch, and a more pleasant listening experience.

The tonearm also has a cup where you can inject a bit of damping fluid (you can order it from Tri-Planar). This damps out tonearm resonance.

A stylus is being pulled back and forth by the groove many times a second. The stylus sits at the end of a long rod called a cantilever. There is a coil at the other end of this lever. Somewhere between the stylus and coil end, there is a rubber block, which acts as a mechanical pivot.

This system acts much like a pendulum in a clock. There is a frequency at which the tonearm/cartridge will “go crazy” and start oscillating about.

Tonearm and cartridge manufacturers try to make this frequency BELOW the music frequency and ABOVE the frequency of any record warp. They do not always achieve that goal.

BELOW this “resonant frequency” the arm wiggles WITH the groove warp, which means you lose output.

Slightly ABOVE the resonance frequency, the arm moves in the OPPOSITE direction from the groove, and you get too much output.

All this can cause havoc if you have speakers with deep bass, or if you have a subwoofer. Your woofer cone starts flapping about and you can have “response” or “howling”, which causes you to turn the volume down.

This damper solves the problem, by suppressing the resonance to a great extent.

Bass becomes smoother, tighter, and howling is reduced or eliminated. Your tonearm can also track warped records much better, with a minimum of flexing of the cantilever. Your cartridge never “bottoms out” anymore on warps.

If you are not well schooled in turntable setup, when you receive the turntable, you will want to give it to an experienced turntable maven or take it to any good stereo repair center and have an experienced tech assemble it and balance the tonearm for you.

PRICING: We have set the Reserve on the turntable with tonearm, cartridge, motor, new belt, dust cover, and record clamp at $1488.00.

SHIPPING TIME: We are fanatics about packing. The bottom base will be boxed, the top plate boxed, the platter boxed, and the dust cover boxed. Then those boxes will be overboxed.

The tonearm damping fluid will be removed, the tonearm tied down, and the counterweight removed.

In short, nothing will be left to chance.

We recently shipped a Thorens TD126 with an SME tonearm and it arrived safely. If we can do that, this one will be relatively easy.

Never the less, it will take us hours to pack the turntable.

Since there is a substantial chance that the turntable will go to someone local who will prefer to have it pre-set-up, we will wait until the sale is over to pack it, so please allow us up to FIVE DAYS to get it packed and shipped.

I would rather have you wait and receive it in fine shape than rush and have it damaged.

Happy offerding!

Things to know…

This item is USED with no warranty, refunds, or exchanges. It has been tested.

For sales to within the US, we accept Paypal or major credit cards.

For sales to Canada, we accept PAYPAL ONLY.

We will ship this item to the US and Canada ONLY.

I estimate the total shipping weight with multiple boxes at about 80 pounds.

Items sold to / shipped to within New York State, or picked up at the store, will be charged sales tax.

The above words are the property of KZ Consulting and are NOT to be copied.

This item has been shown 1714 times. Vpi Hw19 Mk4 Turntable W/tri-planar Tonearm And Lyra Mc Cartridge W/low Reserve: $3,050