Typical upgrade path from VPI?

I'd bet you have a sub speaker integration problem.I would vary my crossover points.Probably up.No higher than 60 Hz if you only have one sub.Higher if you have two.I own several subs they all collect dust now.I never got them to give as good base as i could get with full range speakers.
That vpi is a good deck.You have a good cart.Unless something is broke id say check the subs or maybe you don't like(taste) the mix of components you have.
My third idea is could it be your room?Your room is half your sound.

Hi Redtop.

I don't use a sub. My room is soundproofed and retains bass energy. My current speakers are Aerial Model 9s - a bad match as these are bass heavy speakers that overload the room. So when playing any other source besides my turntable, I get way too much bass (working on that problem - auditioning other speakers etc). So I know that problem is isolated to the TT somehow (I've swapped amps, preamp etc).

I'll have my Rhea back tomorrow as well as a new cartridge to try out. I've pretty convinced that it's not the actual turntable, but the cartridge. We'll soon see.

Thanks.

Madfloyd, I think that you just nailed the problem with you latest responce. If your speakers are overloading the room in the deep bass, then I bet that your are getting a bunch of mid bass suck outs due to various node multibles. These suck outs can be 15-25db deep and are caused by the dimensions of the room and its effect on the nodes.
I can speak from experience because I have sub woofers and had room node peaks at 80,160 cycles and a 18db suck out at 40hz.I installed 8 basstraps in my room and that not only brought the suck out up,but brought the peaks down.
You say that your room is soundproofed, but that is a lot different than treated acousticaly. I would bet that a whole lot of bass traps like the panels from RealTraps would cure 95% of your problem. Without an acousticaly treated room it is useless to audition any other speakers in that room.IMO if the Ariel 9s are loading up the room, the ones that you are considering would be worse.Not only that, without a treated room you cannot know what any component of your system is capable of.
I would suggest that you either borrow a Real Time Analyzer, or find someone that has one and will help you with it, and take a sound profile of your room and I think that you will be surprised at what you see.
Like others have said on this thread, I have a VPI Scout and I get all of the low and mid bass that I need now, but not before I treated the room.
Good Luck
Carter

Thanks for the response, Carter.

I did purchase quite a few RealTraps (too much actually, have to sell a bunch). I have only 4 of them in place - they turned out to be too cumbersome - my room looked like a junkyard with more of them. They didn't solve the problem (helped somewhat though).

I have tried other speakers in the room without the same issues. I have a pair of Genesis 6.1s in another system that I tried - worked great. My old speakers (which I still have) are Von Schweikert and I've always thought that they had pretty flat bass response and they work in the room (I don't like their lack of high freq detail though). Also have auditioned Rockport Miras which didn't overload the room either.

I too have a spike around 80hz. I'm auditioning Dynaudio C2s over the next couple days (receive them tomorrow). My guess is that they will be a tad anemic in the midbass, but I do like the detail so I'm going to try them anyway.

All this to say that you are right about soundproofing not being sound treatment, but while my room is not perfect, it's not that bad either - the Aerials have 4 bass drivers per speaker - simply a crazy amount of bass for my situation.

Madfloyd,
without knowing what the actual response is from your TT you are just guessing. Buy a NAB broadcast test disc, play it back and measure the output voltage from your pre amp at each test frequency. Once you know what the response is, then you can figure out what is needed to solve your problem.