Have anyone replace VPI SSM belt with string?

I just remembered, when I had my VPI I heard they had made a new TT belt. It's made from one piece of rubber and not sliced as yours is.
You might want to check into it. That noise drove me crazy.
And is why am this way today. My wife says no though.

Yes, I have replaced the rubber belt with a string on my Aries 2. Belt tension is of course critical since you'll not have the 'gription' of the stock belt. Easily done with SAMA. I don't have the dual-flywheel motor, but I can certainly see the difficulty in setting up string drive for the two flywheels. (However, the old style, separate flywheel should be relatively easy)

Tried dental floss, but it was too slippery-platter would not turn at a constant speed.

I use a carpet thread, and I believe the SDS (or equivalent) would be necessary to dial in the speed.

Benefits-increased sense of 'pace' and 'immediacy'.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have cleaned my platter with Windex and my VPI SSM does have those one piece black nitrile belt, but those small belts still make some noises from time to time. Wouldn't boiling the belts make them brittle and crack easily? My VPI SSM belts do not seem to have any talcs on them when I first used them unlike the older VPI TNT Jr that I used to own.

So dental floss will not have enough friction to drive the flywheel or platter? My friend who has a Micro Seiki replaced his string with dental floss and that's what Micro Seiki forum suggested as well. Maybe I have to experiment with different floss materials. One of the advantage of using floss or string is to reduce speed variation since belts stretch, but some floss are too slippery for this application apparently. So no wax, no nylon type if I want to experiment with floss?

Fortunately, my SSM does come with SDS so I can dial in the speed easily.

Yes, the floss I tried was waxed (that's what I had around :-) and I haven't tried the unwaxed. I'll buy some next time I'm at the drugstore and see what happens.

Well worth the time to try this. I'll keep this thread tabbed to see the results of your experiments.

I've used carpet/button thread with a TNT III/flywheel set-up and can report quite an improvement in focus & musicality & relief from slurring in the bass region. If the string can't be tensioned, the tricked is to tie knots within knots to the point that there is enough tension for friction, but not so much that you hear the knot ping when passing through the pulleys. If you can get this working you won't go back to rubber bands. With a little practice you can get two threads +/- 1mm.