Yet another VPI 16.5 thread

Grimace,

Mine has been worry-free for many years. Coupled with Walker Quartet, I am very happy with performance and relative value. If ever needed, VPI support is friendly & expert, although not always easiest to reach(Tues-Thurs only).

Wendell, my teleportation tweak allows me to clean LPs located in other time zones. Cheers,
Spencer

I've owned a new 16.5 for about 16-17 months now.

The build quality of the machine is professionally executed, in, and out, totally first rate. Nothing I've found was haphazardly put together, to give any dislike to. All internal wiring is neat, bundled, properly executed, the assembly of the MFD Laminated Case is done precisely, is extremely neat, no sloppy assembly at all in that regard.

Fancy woods-materials, or better quality materials for Wand Tower Assembly, which is Delrin, the use of something other than MDF Platter, and some more costly components would add to cost, but essentially do nothing to improve the cleaning efficiency of the prouct.

As I once believe Harry said himself a long time ago, his priorities, were to make a good machine, that the masses could afford, and I believe he has accomplished that goal. Mark

Grimace,
If you have never owned a record cleaning machine, once you get one, you will wonder why you didn't buy one sooner.

I have owned three models of RCMs over 25 year period, however I wish I kept my highly reliable and efficient though "noisy" VPI16.5.

A VPI17F replaced it a few years ago, this was prior to discovering how effective Walkers Prelude and Step 4 are.
I would of kept the 16.5, it IS a real work horse.

To answer your questions, yes you manually apply the cleaner fluids with the 16.5 while the platter spins at about 15 rpm.
Apply brushes and vacuum off.

Yes these are simple functions however they are HIGHLY effective on vintage and new Lps.

The vacuumed off fluids are drained away through a hose out the bottom into what ever you have on hand, jar , bucket, coffee tin ect.

The 16.5 is built to a price point, it will not take ruff handling, it simply is not built with that in mind, why should it be.

I think most of the problems you read from other users are related to careless use and handling,however there could easily be the odd lemon that left the factory.

In any case I highly recommend the VPI 16.5.

Guys,

I thought that I might chip in on this since I may have about as much experience using the HW-16.5 as anyone. It has been used regularly for our extensive laboratory testing.

First, I have no affiliation whatsoever with VPI other than being a customer for just this one product. I am a competitor of theirs in other product lines.

For the development and testing of our products, and for my personal use, the HW-16.5 here has now recorded in excess of 150,000 cleaning cycles without any parts failures. The only issue that I have had to date is realigning the platter shaft in the motor arbor because the screws worked loose. It took about 30 minutes total to fix it.

Being in the business, one of our development projects has been to "build a better mousetrap" in regard to record cleaning machines. I can tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the engineering that went into the functionality of the HW-16.5 is beyond reproach.

For instance, using the physics of vacuum and moving fluids, the pickup tube on the HW-16.5 is exactly the right size and the slot is exactly the right size to ensure that the spent record cleaning fluid is removed rather than dried on the surface of the record. Only someone with the ability and willingness to do the math could have worked this out.

Using the cloth strips to drastically reduce the venturi effect at the pickup orifice was also no accident. This is a result of Harry's knowledge of physics, and it also helps prevent dirty fluid from being dried on the surface of the record.

Concluding, I don't think you can find anything that will do the job better, and certainly not for the price. It's one of the true values in high-end audio.

Jim Pendleton
Osage Audio Products, LLC

I have had mine for about 20 years, no problems with it. Occasionally if you do a lot of records the fluid tank will fill and the unit will shut down until it all evaporates, but that's clearly noted in the manual and is normal. I like the fact that I can scrub a record as much as it needs it on this machine; in that regard I like it better than the fully automatic machines. Highly recommended.