Hi-Fi Choice - May

REVIEWS
VPI
SCOUT JR £1,650
Scouting
for boys
The smallest member of VPI’s Scout range
pitches into a competitive market. Ed Selley
thinks it deserves a merit badge
I
f you’re in the market for
a turntable in the price
range of £1,500-£2,000 at
the moment, you are truly
spoilt for choice. This price point has
become keenly contested and
manufacturers have been pulling out
the stops to produce options that
reflect their philosophy while offering
simplicity and convenience in terms
of setup and use.
For VPI industries, competing at
this price point has required some
evolution of its existing models. The
original, long-running Scout turntable
has evolved into the Scout 2, but has
seen commensurate price rises taking
it above £2,000. The answer has been
to take the Scout design and refine
aspects of it to become the Scout Jr
– available for £1,600 without
cartridge or £1,650 with an Ortofon
2M Red (HFC 345), as seen here.
In keeping with the VPI philosophy,
the Scout Jr is an unsuspended,
belt-driven design and VPI has been
able to keep a number of Scoutspecific
design attributes. The Jr has
a separate motor, which sits in a
recess on the left-hand side of the
plinth. This is a 500rpm AC design
chosen for the EU market and it sits
on chunky rubber feet for isolation.
The motor has a full-size IEC mains
input and speed adjustment is made
by changing the belt over two pulleys.
The plinth is non-resonant MDF
coated in the traditional VPI black
crackle finish. It is mounted on four
large metal spiked feet with rubber
tips that lend the Scout Jr a degree of
isolation. The plinth contains an oil
bath bearing and a steel shaft with
Jacobs taper onto which the platter
sits. This bearing comes supplied
pre-assembled and lubricated so it is
DETAILS
PRODUCT
VPI Scout Jr
ORIGIN
USA/Denmark
(cartridge)
TYPE
Belt-drive turntable
WEIGHT
11kg
DIMENSIONS
(WxHxD)
500 x 180 x 380mm
FEATURES
● 33 & 45rpm
● Machined
aluminium platter
● Ortofon 2M Red
cartridge
● 9in vertical yoketype
tonearm
DISTRIBUTOR
Renaissance Audio
TELEPHONE
0131 5553922
WEBSITE
vpiindustries.com;
renaissanceaudio.
co.uk
a simple matter of dropping the
platter onto the spindle when you
unpack the deck. The platter itself is
a 1in-thick piece of machined 6061
aluminium that comes with a rubber
anti-slip mat.
Where the Jr differs most
significantly from the more expensive
Scout model is the tonearm. By
preference, VPI tends towards
unipivot-style designs that are freely
suspended on a spike-type mount.
These are relatively costly to produce
and can be a little intimidating to less
experienced users. As such, the Jr
makes use of an arm that is captive
in the horizontal axis, but acts as a
unipivot in the vertical to try and give
some of the performance traits of a
true unipivot.
One area where the arm is clearly
a VPI design is the way the wire does
not exit through the pivot axis, but
instead arcs in a loop out the top of
the arm and into a terminal block. By
applying a twist to this cable, the
force it applies back onto the arm acts
as an anti-skate mechanism. This is
resourceful, but not without some
rather testing quirks.
Out of the box, the arm is rather stiff
and can ‘stick’ at points on a record
until loosened up. The loop anti-skate
is effective in operation, but the
exposed cable is very vulnerable
to outside interference from other
nearby electronics.
These quirks aside, the Scout Jr feels
solid and very well thought
out. The hefty platter and smooth
movement of the arm give the deck
50 MAY 2016