Thanks for all the input. I am in transistion right now, taking on an assignment oversea that uses a different voltage and I have to build a system from scratch. Did bring my VPI SSM with me, but it's been sitting in the box for the past few months as I have no phono stage to hook it up to. But hearing all the positive feedback of using strings I am inclined to give it a try since there is little to lose.
I wonder if I only replace the long belt with string and keep the motor/flywheel belts, will I hear any improvement? It will be easy to do as I can move the motor assembly in/out to adjust tension. But most of the belt noise is coming from those short belts, so I won't be cutting down the noise there. With the old TNT flywheel setup, I assumed one can move the motor/flywheel around to adjust string tension as well?